Tuetano Taqueria - San Diego

We had a late and wonderful lunch today at the San Diego Old Town location. The food isn’t good: it’s spectacular! You should focus on the birria, both in taco form, and separately with the bone broth. It’s amazingly dense with flavor. The ceviche might have been the best we’ve ever had. All of the ingredients had pure fresh taste with the cilantro and onions perfectly balanced with lime soaked octopus and shrimp. The fish tacos were also excellent. The tortillas appeared to be small batch and were great. The coupe de grace for me was the home made hot chili sauce. It reminded me of Chinese hot peppers in oil, I’ve spent more than a year traveling in China. It was prepared in that style with dried roasted peppers crushed in oil. The intense smoky hot taste built on traditional Mexican peppers is amazing. I had not encountered this style of Mexican hot sauce until today. The patio setting is super comfortable and the people who run the place are friendly and generous. Go out of your way to eat at this place. I’ll certainly be back next time I’m in San Diego.

Not only is the food absolutely delicious but it's dependably consistent. Have returned many times with consistently quality food. A bit prices but there is not skimping on the amount of meat in your item. Highly recommended.

I was skeptical of the hype from the Michelin acknowledgement but dang I was wrong, this place is so good! The consume is delicious, the tacos are amazing. This place is a must try

These were the most delicious tacos. Service was great and food was amazing.

The original location in San Ysidro was one of 34 San Diego restaurants to receive a mention in the 2021 Michelin California guide. The Michelin guide highlighted the homey spot and concluded that with Tuetano 's portions, flavors, and prices one need not go across the border to have an authentic Mexican birria taco. The same cannot be said for this new location. I 've been to both. Michelin got it right for the San Ysidro location. The prices were reasonable, you could see a couple Mexican women in their small kitchen cooking with love, and the menu was decent. So, based on this I was happy to give them my business. Today that changed. As other Yelpers complained, the prices are steep and the birria is on the dry side. It is no longer a homey place either. It 's more like a shared cafeteria setting with an equally overpriced seafood truck/restaurant $18 ceviche). Naturally, the prices has to be steeper as rent in Old Town is as high, if not higher, than downtown or other central locations. But the service didn 't make up for it. Indeed, the service was the worst thing. I ordered tacos without certain ingredients and they served them anyway. I asked them to remake me a plain taco and said I was willing to pay for it but they insisted that I didn 't. They just took away the topping from the surface. For those of you for whom cilantro tastes like soap, a superficial scraping of the cilantro on top doesn 't cut it because you 'll still taste any cilantro left in between the pieces, that 's what happened here. So we had to throw those away. All in all, is you really want authentic but don 't want to cross the border, head south to Chula Vista for a mom and pop shop. But if you want convenience, and to try birria for the first time, AND have $6 to spend on one taco or $10 for one quesadilla, go for it.