REVIEW: La Piñata underwhelms

By Hanah Wyman,
Bluedevilhub.com Staff–

Since I’ve been eating at the same restaurants in Davis all of my life, I’m always curious to try a out a new restaurant when one comes, especially if it’s Mexican food. Guadalajara is good, but you could hardly call Chipotle authentic, so I had high hopes for La Piñata. I decided to go try it on a Thursday for lunch with a friend.

The restaurant is located near the UC Davis campus on First Street. One of the first things I noticed when we walked in was the multitude of college students, many of whom decided to get food to go.

Upon looking at the menu, I discovered that most of the food was very affordable. The menu had a lot of options, including tacos, burritos and enchiladas. They had more than 10 options for meat, plus vegetarian options.

La Piñata had a lot of truly authentic dishes, like pozole and bionicos, which are hard to find at many of the other Mexican food places in town. The menu was easy to understand and described the food well.

I ordered chicken tacos and my friend got a chile relleno burrito. The wait to order was a bit too long for my liking, but there was only one cashier and the place is new. The cashier was friendly and helpful.

In the time we were waiting, I had a chance to look around at the rest of the restaurant. In addition to many tables, there was a bar to sit at, although it was very dark and right next to the cashier.

It was clean, but one thing that really put me off was that half of the building was under construction, and had remnants of the restaurant that occupied it before–a Chinese food place. Some parts were badly lit and incomplete. Honestly, the place seemed slightly sketchy.

We found a table near a window and sat down. Our food came in less than five minutes, which was a nice surprise after the long wait to order.

The waitress that brought our food was nice and very accommodating, but my tacos were mediocre at best. They lacked flavor and the chicken was drowned in some sort of sauce that seemed a like little soup to me. They didn’t really taste too much like anything and certainly not Mexican food.

My friend’s burrito had some of the similar problems. It was also in that same sauce and the pepper that was in it was indistinguishable from spinach.

However, there were a lot of other options that looked good–we didn’t try the chip and salsa bar, which looked promising.

Overall, the place did not live up to my expectations; I’ll be sticking to Guad and El Toro Bravo for my tacos.

However, I would recommend La Piñata to college students, since it is very close to campus and is affordable and fast. And while it may not be the most authentic-tasting or flavorful Mexican food in Davis, I think that for the price and the convenience it is a good option for UCD students.