Tortilla Heights

You can find good Mexican in San Francisco pretty easily. Being a town full of foodies, the people who live in this city know that good Mexican food is abundant and cheap. So it stands to reason that expensive Mexican food would be superior in every way. I mean instead of meat from questionable sources, they'd have meat from Nimon Ranch so it's gotta be better, right? Wrong, dead wrong, terribly wrong. Case in point, Tortilla Heights.

Anyone whose been around the block looking for a good burrito will tell you that a good Mexican place will be kind of divey, the staff will have dubious American Citizenship, everything on the menu is inexpensive, and if it's not a taco truck; it's a building in a ghetto-ish area. Tortilla Heights is none of these things. For one thing, Tortilla Heights is located in the Pacific Heights rich person neighborhood. It also has a tiki bar decor, which implies to me that rich people have confused Mexicans with Hawaiians. Not only that, but everyone who was a server looked like they came from a sorority. I would've been fine with all of these had my food been good, or had it been cheap, but alas it was neither.

After dinner with a good dozen of my cohorts, the general consensus was Tortilla Heights had some of the blandest Mexican food this side of the border. My chimichunga was literally flavorless. The meat inside had no seasoning or marinade, nor did it have any ingredients beyond the meat that would add any sort of taste to it. It was also $12 dollars. For $12 I could've eaten at two or even three places in the Mission District and tasted something more flavorful. The person next to me had an appetizer plater of nachos, which would sound appealing except the cheese they used looked and tasted like the cheese you have to pump out of a 7-11 nacho station. Looking at the faces of everyone at the end and it was unanimous, this place sucked. If there was any one saving grace, it was the churros. However, it's hard to fuck up fried dough with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on it so that's not saying much.

Overall, Tortilla Heights is a bland and pricey experience. The ingredients taste fresh, and wont make you sick but it's no Celia's or Tommy's as far as gourmet Mexican goes. Even worse, if you're thinking of stopping by there for a cool margarita on a hot day you'd be greated by some of the worst ventilation in any building. I assume it's to simulate the mexican heat, but no air conditioning or open windows on a hot day probably constitutes a crime somewhere. My recommendation, walk down the street to Japan Town and get ramen instead.

Tortilla Heights is located on the corner of Divisadero and Bush in Pacific Heights.