Tio Leo’s Mexican Restaurant

I used to come here all the time but had been a number of years since my last visit. WOW things have changed. Horrible food horrible service. I went there on a Sunday afternoon and only concern of the wait staff was trying to have customers pay for a shot for them. Actually the owner probably paid for the majority of the them. I won’t come back too many other better options.

Extremely unimpressed by this place… We sat down & the place was completely empty, should’ve known then. Waiter could hardly be bothered to help us, food was overpriced and bland. Payed almost $ 10 after obligatory tip for just a vegetarian burrito. It was uncomfortably quiet in there, no music playing. The two stars are for the free chips and salsa, that was the only plus

The food here is really good. Not fanatic, but good. You do get a lot of food for your money and it’s not cheep. But what do you expect from a restaurant?
The host wasn’t at the front when I arrived and when I said I was picking up the order she disappeared with my card for like 5 minutes without explication. I’m assuming she charged it but I dunno. Then she gave it back and left again to get my food. It made me laugh.
She was nice though and I love drinking here.
I’d give this place a 4 but I hate their parking lot. Napa is a horrible street and you can’t get to it from Morena.

Sat for ten minutes for waitress to come greet me. Older woman horrible waitress. Guy sitting in booth a few away from me with two obnoxious horrible kids. One beating the booth and table with silverware like drumsticks. Table next to them asked them to please quiet down. Dad sitting on his cellphone ignoring his kids. Dad gets up and flips off table next to him and makes huge scene. Table next to me gets up and leaves complaining about same kid. I told manager I was also offended and I am very loyal to this restaurant, come sometimes two or three times a week. He could care less. For him it is all about money. He has option to not serve this disruptive table or move them. He moves them. I will NEVER BE Back. The assistant manager is a total self conceded jerk.
What happened to guest service.

If you have a problem with this review, please don’t bother sending me a message… bc I could give two shits about why this review bugs you. and it wont change a damn thing. GET A LIFE! LOSER.

*****This review is solely on the bar here******
Was invited to grab a celebratory Cinco de Mayo Margarita… Me, turn down drinks? Hells to the No…
First off, parking in this lot is kinda like fitting sardines in a can, but just pray to the parking gods. (You should get a spot if offering a good sacrifice) bwahaaha
The bar here, is cave like, like pitch black, with Christmas lights strung along the ceiling… it took about two minutes for my eyes to adjust to the darkness…
Anywayzzzz, greeted with a large basket of large, warm fresh tortilla chips, bottomless, salsa refilled as well. Crowd… Well you got the uptight suits to the right of ya, face lifts and botoxers to da left of ya… And overly tattooed dead center, and kids hangin in da club… Fifty Cent would be proud…
As for the margarita, it was a typical house margarita on the rocks, kinda like most of the folks up in here (just an observation) house special happy hour… service prompt…
No problems here…

Def not authentic. Look around when you’re there… but I like their gringo enchiladas and they have pretty good service. Also, overpriced, btw. If I had a choice I wld go to El Indio for the same type of food and it’s cheaper and a little better.

Absolutely nothing to like about this place. Slow service, food is nothing special, price is too high for what you get. Never again!

My review is for the bar/​music/​entertainment. I don’t eat here so I cannot comment on the quality or taste of food. It is a great dive-​y place (dated but clean) to stop by some night when you are in the mood to dance, shake your booty and leave. I live very close and try to go especially when the Detroit Underground plays.

The queso dip tasted like melted cheese from the microwave at home. The chips were stale. The eggplant rice bowl looked good based on pictures but it was very soggy and the rice was a little rough.

We had an early dinner here today. Entered around 4:00. Had to wait about 5 min for someone to seat us. After we were seated it took about 10 minutes for the waiter to take our drinks. When doing so he seemed totally disinterested and had to have us repeat what we wanted.
Ordered our food and it came quickly. Everyone was very happy with our dinners. No issues. When our drinks came they were full of ice, so not much drink. It was refilled one time, the same way. After the food came we did not see him again until we had to ask another server for the bill. He seemed indifferent, bordering on rude. While I really like my dinner. I am not sure I would go back because of the service. There are just too many good Mexican Restaurants in San Diego to suffer poor service.

Came here on a whim to give it a try based on Unilocal reviews… Yeah where to start… I’m still sitting here not eating my food texting out this review… That should tell you how bad…
The misspelling of «posole» should have been a clue that this wasn’t authentic Mexican food… But we gave it a go anyways…
The service wasn’t bad … That’s where the 2 stars comes in…
We ordered the nachos as the appetizer and they were tasteless and soggy … And I do mean tasteless with shredded meat as opposed to the usual carne asada…
I ordered the taco basket … There was no flavor, absolutely no flavor and the meat was dry as hell … I rarely have to add salt to anything but this needed some flavor and the green salsa was bland as hell…
My boyfriend ordered the carnitas which he normally tears up… Yeah he left most of it… The carnitas was equally bland and the old rice and what looked like days old canned beans weren’t any better…
No self respecting Mexican would call this Mexican food… I can see where the non-​Latino folk would consider this tasty Mexican food; however, it’s nowhere near good. It’s like calling Taco Bell Mexican food … Actually id rather eat Taco Bell … Unilocal you failed me this time… Now off to find some food to cleanse our palette…

I live not far from this place, and I try to get in the habit of trying all the places around me. Tio Leo is a chain which looks like a old Tex Mex diner that I use to eat at as a kid in los Angeles, so I thought I would give it a try.
There is ample parking and tons of seating, even though the place was not busy on a Wed night. The place also apparently has live music every night with somebody different. The bar areas had a bunch of seating and looked dive bar funish, but I didn’t go in. There is a five buck cover for the bar, but you can still hear the music from the restaurant. Not sure if you can order food from the bar.
The margarita I had was strong but not super tasty. I’ll take strong so I still ordered a second. Worth the price.
The food was only so so, normal for what you would expect from Tex mex. There are plenty of authentic tasty places in San Diego. The rice and beans and tortilla chips were pretty damn good.
This place would be good for a family which can’t really do authentic Mexican food but wanted to try Mexican if you know what I mean.
Service was good and attentive. Overall I doubt I’ll be back since I live in San Diego with good Mexican food everywhere.

Tio Leo’s catered and event for me, delivered 20 of the Street Taco meals and the burrito finger app’s. Tons of food, all really good. I highly recommend them for making your party easy. Joe came in set everything up gave me the full run down on all the items. I didn’t even have to heat anything up, it was great– just started serving.
Caritas was amazing! Big hit with the crowd.
Nice Job!

This place really interests me for happy hour, but we went for brunch. The portion was enormous. I ordered the breakfast burrito which was supposed to have chorizo. The chorizo wasn’t red like normal and my boyfriend and I felt like it was more like breakfast sausage. I didn’t get sick, so I’m guessing it was just sausage in the burrito.
The service was pretty good and our waitress was friendly. We were in a hurry and for a sit down place it was pretty quick. I didn’t partake in any of the drink specials since I needed to drive a bit afterwards, but it was advertised that they have a champagne brunch. They didn’t give the details.
I would say, I would probably not come back for brunch, but I would maybe come back to try happy hour.

We arrived here at 4:00pm on a Wednesday for an early dinner. There were only 4 – 5 cars in the parking lot, which in my opinion meant they were not that busy. When we entered the restaurant no one was at the front counter area. We waited 2 to 3 minutes maybe longer and still no one came to the counter. Finally, my husband walked into the dining area and a waiter gave us a quick greeting and showed us to a booth. Busy or not someone should always be available to greet customers when they enter into a restaurant.
Our server (Jose) was calm and pleasant but not warm and friendly. Chips and salsa was brought to the table. I have to admit the chips and salsa were pretty good. The salsa was not too spicy and the chips were warm and crunchy. We ordered drinks and dinner. My husband commented to me that a female waitress saw us standing at the counter (2 – 3 minutes maybe longer) and never came out to greet us or to find the person scheduled to be at the counter. Instead she kept on chatting with other customers in the restaurant. And she continued to chat with this one couple long after we were seated. Everyone could hear her conversation as she talked about her other teaching job, her new baby and husband.
We get our food fairly quickly and everything looked hot and tasty. I ordered the Chicken Flautas and Carne Asada Fries and my husband ordered the Carne Asada Plate (Carne Asada meat, beans, rice and a cheese enchilada). Both meals were good. The chicken and carne asada meat was tender and seasoned well. Our server checked on us often asking if «everything was okay». Overall, once we were finally seated the dinner experience was fine. Not awesome, or amazing just fine.

Not the best Mexican food but that is not why the group I sometimes run with goes there. We go there for the great service and the atmosphere. We usually get to sit in the back when it is not a major holiday. The room has a ton of historical black and white photos from North Park back in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s which is very cool. They have bottomless mimosa’s for lunch on Sunday’s also which some members of our group enjoy.
I recommend just sticking with simple dishes like quesadilla’s, chips and salsa, carne asada and huevos rancheros. The food quality is not very good, most of it tastes like it came out of a can or a jar but like I said, you go there for the fun and the wonderful servers.
I do love the fact that Candy Kayne and other really talented local artists go there to play in their club area. They seem to have something fun going on almost every night.
This place is great for families, lot’s of room for kids and such.

HA! the last time i was here was more than 20 years ago… it is your basic Mexican-​ish/​style food… you know… like el torito.
the place is super dated and looks OLD!
on this occasion I didn’t eat food… well i ate chips and salsa (yum!)
they had HH drinks… i had a $ 5 margarita… it was good.
apparently there was a 40+ singles night happening here. and they charge a cover for this! we weren’t there to meet anyone… just killing time before our party at MORENA STORAGE… so they didn’t take our cash.
i find it pretty funny that the bar was filling up with 40+ singles… i didn’t know these things really happened… I guess there are some (way over) 40’s who don’t know about online dating.

Came in for happy hour. Evidently this place has been here forever. We walked straight to the bar area for happy hour. Happy hour is until 7pm on weeknights — YES!!! The prices and specials for HH were definitely on point. The bar area is pretty large with tons of booths, bar bellies and bar seating. There is a small stage and a dance floor.
The night we came there was actually a 40+ singles party and the guy who I presumed is the manager asked if we were there for the party… Um, I’m not even 40, but whatever… It was dark so I was giving the guy the benefit of the doubt with poor eyesight.
Yes, the bar is dark which could be a good thing or a bad thing. We were offered free chips and salsa (unlimited) and the drink and food specials during HH were decent. We decided to order our drinks ($ 4 for draft beers/​$ 5 margarita and wells) and $ 5 carne aside fries. The carne fries were OK. Not the best I’ve had, but good small portion to split with 2 people. The meat was actually pretty tender and flavorful. I’d actually be happy with just having all meat.
The service was good, as it wasn’t too busy when we came in. The décor is blah, so perhaps that’s why it’s so dim in the bar area. The restaurant definitely needs updating.
Come for the HH drafts…

I used to come here with my main on dinner dates, but this has now become more of a convenient lunch spot for my co-​workers and I to congregate at when we want to get away from our 9 – 5.
Now, let’s talk about price. Over time, I’ve noticed a significant price change for all their foods on the menu from Appetizers to Combo plates. The prices have definitely gone up over the past few years. The price of their appetizers are significantly higher than something like a Grilled Chicken Fajita that you would get a lot more out of than 3 Flautas. Just saying. Don’t get me wrong, their food is good. It’s a nice place to sit down and enjoy a margarita that’s for sure. If you want something quick and made to order, this would not be your best bet. Perhaps Nico’s or JV’s down the street would be better. If you want to save some money, come here during Happy Hour (3PM-​7PM) and check out their $ 5 menu. You’ll find Carne Asada Fries, Flautas and more for a better deal than during regular hours.
Service is almost usually prompt as the servers like to bring out everyone’s plate at the same time. The ambiance is for the most part pretty old school and traditional. It could use a little bit of an update like most of the Mexican eateries you’d see in Old Town without perhaps taking away the «Authentic» feel of the restaurant itself. Overall, it’s a nice place to dine in with family, friends and co workers if you are looking to sit down over some decent Mexican food.