Fred's Mexican Cafe

After an amazing evening at a tech event where my company was exhibiting, my team, friends, and I needed some food and drinks to celebrate the experience long into the night. We opted for Fred's since that is usually a friendly place for semi-drunk folks and was a pretty popular place to enjoy a margarita in the middle of the night. When we walked in, it was almost completely dead, which was just fine with me after the busy evening of shmoozing at Analog just moments before.

The dinner started with their house chips and salsa, and the salsa itself was very tasty and even had a nice kick to it. I ordered up the Rosarito combo served with a mahi mahi taco and chicken enchilada. For about $13, this was no cheap meal by a long shot since there was really only 2 simple items on the plate. I found both the taco and enchilada to be extremely bland and was disappointed by my expensive plate of food. The drinks are pretty heavy-handed which is nice, but the food is really what I wanted a healthy helping of. Unfortunately it was another case of the SD food blues for me and I would have much preferred an authentic street taqueria to this stuff, and at half the price.

While the service was decent, our waitress didn't smile once. I don't know what the deal was but it didn't seem like she wanted to be there at all. If it wasn't for the great company, it would have been a miserable dinner but fortunately we've got a great company of friends that can turn any frown upside-down. The heated patio outside is very dog friendly though so that saves this as a place to get a group of friends together. Perhaps I'll be back for some margaritas.

Food: 4/10

Service: 6/10

Price: $$

Atmosphere: 5/10