Tio Chava's
18452 Yorba Linda Blvd.
Yorba Linda, CA 92886
Tio Chava's has been open in Yorba Linda since 1999, but they recently moved out of their previous location to their new digs at the corner of Yorba Linda Boulevard and Imperial Highway. I had never been to their other location before. The restaurant is plain-looking and decently sized. It is busy this Wednesday night, but they have a table that can fit our party of seven. So, let's see how this place measures up.
First, we have salsa. I was hoping for more from this. I thought it just tasted way too bland—kind of like mild Pace Picante. They did have a fire-roasted salsa that we had later during our meal that was much better, so definitely ask for that one if you come here. The chips were your standard restaurant-style tortilla chips.
Tio Chava's has a special on the front of their menu; you can get five soft tacos for five dollars every day of the week. I was really hungry, so I started with this. Above are the five tacos. I chose the carne asada, grilled chicken, carnitas, pastor, and shredded beef (other choices included lengua, ground beef, and chorizo). The meat was okay, and they all tasted the same. It was hard to distinguish between the different tacos. I still thought this was a good value because, on the menu, the tacos are listed at $2.25, so according to my math, we just saved ourselves $6.25, which is not too bad.
Here is Katie's dish. She chose the Taco and Taco plate. I did not get a bite of the chicken taco, but there looked to be a lot of lettuce on it. The tamale tasted very good, not dry, and I really liked the sauce that it was drenched in. The rice and beans had a good, mellow flavor.
Clay picked the wet carnitas burrito served with rice and beans. For $6, this is a pretty good-sized burrito. The meat tasted great, and once again, the sauce really added to the burrito.
Here is a picture of Sandy's Tostado. I am not sure what kind of meat she went with here because you can not see through the mound of lettuce they piled on it. I know that she did like it, though, because she finished her plate.
Sorry for the blurry picture. This is Rocio's Ceviche Tostado. This tostada was prepared with onion, cilantro, tomatoes, and shrimp. I did not try it, but it looked really good and was under $4.
Our big eater for the night was Erven. This was his Seafood Combo soup, which featured fish, shrimp, abalone scallops, and octopus. It cost $14, but it was big and would have been a meal for anyone but Erven. He ordered another plate, too. He really did like this, and it really had a great aroma to it.
Part two of Erven's food-a-palooza is the Pollo con Mole Poblano. This was the best dish of the night, in my opinion. The sweet mole sauce was awesome. I would totally get this the next time I visited Tio Chava's. It's a very good dish made with chocolate.
Lastly, my dish: one pork, one cheese, and one beef enchilada. These all tasted good but not spectacular. Again, probably because they had a lot of sauce poured over them, they all tasted the same. It was a good, solid dish, though.
This is a good, not great, Mexican restaurant. I really enjoyed the mole dish, and the prices were very reasonable. They will get me to come back to explore other items on their menu.
So, out of five uncles, five being the best and zero being the worst, Tio Chava gets three solid uncles.
For more information on Tio Chava's, click here: https://www.tiochavasyl.com/
