The restaurant first opened its doors in St. Paul-suburb Oakdale in December 2014 and expanded in January 2016 to a new location in St. Anthony, a suburb on the Northeast side of town. It may as well be in Minneapolis though, and they sometimes call it their Minneapolis location. This is a competitive area, as not too far from here are two excellent taqueria options: El Taco Riendo, and Maya Cuisine.

The Place

The inside of Catrinas is colorful and inviting. The walls are painted in festive deep pastels. The tables and seating are unique as you can see in the photo. Not pictured is a small room opposite the counter which has seven more tables. The place is decorated all over with Catrina and Day of the Dead pictures and statues. Really cool paper-cut flags and skulls hang from the ceiling. There are three chalkboard menus, one that can be looked at while in line, one that explains the restaurant's name and then lists the available salsas, and one behind the counter, just in case you hadn't yet made your mind up among the many options they offer.

If you're lucky you'll be met at the counter by David, owner and chef of the place. You won't find a more gracious host at any other fast-casual spot. If you're a fresh face you will be offered a selection of the meats to try. This is both nice and a smart business decision, because nobody's tastes are the same and a happy customer is a repeat customer.

Owner/chef David Maceda

Overall the place was clean and well looked after. The bathroom was clean and smelled fresh. There's plenty of parking in the lot.

The Food

After trying the selection of meats offered, I decided on a chicken tinga, a chorizo, and an al pastor taco. My friend ahead of me got the last bit of the chorizo though! I picked a barbacoa instead and David offered to bring me a chorizo later when the next batch was ready to go. Awesome. My friend ordered a side of chips and salsa which made up for it. The tortilla chips here are some of the best I've had anywhere. They've got a perfect amount of oil and fried taste, and the right amount of salt too. They're reminiscent of how Chipotle chain chips are made, but better.

Tacos and other menu items come with a generous amount of options including a great range of salsas of all different spice levels and flavors. Also available are a variety of toppings like fresh jalapeños, cheese, tomatoes, etc, etc. And of course tacos can be ordered with the standard white onion and fresh cilantro dynamo combo. Everything seemed super fresh.

Chicken tinga

From the preview plate, I was pleasantly surprised by the chicken tinga. It had a better, more rich flavor than I was expecting. It's got a light sauce with a slightly smoky pepper and tomato flavor. Usually I'll never get chicken at almost any restaurant, and definitely not from a Mexican one. But the sample convinced me to add it to my plate at the expense of the barbacoa (which I ended up getting anyway).

Once on my tray, the novelty wore off a bit. It was still kinda boring chicken, but it was fighting its hardest to be good. It's moist and tender. The flavor didn't sustain itself through more than a few bites however. It faded into blander chicken for me. Still, if you feel the need to eat chicken for health reasons or something, the option isn't bad.

Barbacoa

The barbacoa taco that I intended to cut in lieu of the chicken would have been a better choice, but I ended up with it anyway. It had a great beefy flavor with some Mexican spices roasted in. It was plenty tender, which came as no surprise as it looked like it had been easily shredded apart. Though I couldn't call it dry, it wasn't as saucy/greasy as a typical meat labeled barbacoa at a taqueria or even a place like Chipotle. At most other places that I have ordered a barbacoa taco from, if it's offered, I usually have some juices dripping down my hand as I eat it. This could be a good or a bad thing depending on your preference, but I'd rather deal with some juice and have some of that extra rich fat and spice flavor.

Chorizo

David delivered! I really wanted to give the chorizo a full-size try based on the sampler. He brought this taco out when the meat was ready and I was happy to get another taste. Similarly to the barbacoa, this chorizo wasn't dripping with fat and juices. But in this case, I think that's a good thing. The chorizo has enough fat in it to not need extra grease. A greasy chorizo is worse than a greasy barbacoa or carnitas taco because the sausage crumbles will fall out and go everywhere.

The delicious sausage combined with a great and rounded mix of spices and some very small bits of pepper makes this chorizo a winner. It's some of the tastiest chorizo I've ever had. It was more clumped than chorizo often is as well, and combined with the lack of grease made it the perfect taco sausage. I don't think I can skip a chorizo taco in any future visit.

Al pastor

The al pastor here is done a little differently. It's marinated and roasted pork loin cubed and then soaked in its sauce. They usually pair a pineapple habanero salsa with it but I did not go for that option. The meat itself is juicy and dripping in its cooked marinade sauce. The texture of the meat is something different for al pastor. It could be a little more tender and on top of that it's cubed, so it feels like eating chunks of meat instead of a more doughy mass. In addition, it's fairly wet and I don't believe it saw a grill after roasting, so it doesn't have any mildly crunchy crust to it.

I can forgive the texture though because the flavor does me right. It's got a hint of pineapple and sweetness to it. In front of that is a lovely and flavorful pork and pepper taste. It borders on meat candy. This is another one I can't skip.

Salsas

Usually a taqueria won't put much effort into their salsas. They might have a dull red and a slightly better green one. Catrinas takes an opposite approach and puts their skeleton mascot's soul into them.

Left to right: citrus jalapeño, salsa quemada, daily feature habanero salsa

In addition to the ones above, I was served what I think must have been the roasted tomatillo salsa with the chorizo taco, pictured above. These salsas are excellent. The jalapeño one was a little lighter than the jalapeño salsas I get at the better taquerias (which usually do about four salsas) but still had a good flavor to it. It really helped on that chicken tinga taco.

The salsa quemada was quite unique as far as salsas that have touched my tongue. It was thick and extremely flavorful. Quemada means burned or roasted in Spanish but the salsa didn't have the smoky flavor I was expecting and instead had a pure roasted flavor that was satisfying. It was quite spicy but not overwhelmingly.

The featured habanero was overwhelmingly spicy, but it tasted so good I dealt with the pain afterwards. One of the best habanero salsas I've had. If I were getting a burrito, I'd want a lot of that salsa mixed with a lot of sour cream and it'd be gravy.

The roasted tomatillo salsa was a bit more wet and light on flavor. It paired with the chorizo well and didn't overpower it however. I'm glad I was given it with the chorizo because I might not have ever given it a shot while ordering.

Conclusion

Catrinas is a funky-decorated, well put together casual restaurant with good food and salsas owned and run by a great host. He even served us newbies up with an amazingly delicious chocoflan for dessert out of the blue. The flan tasted great and it's something I'll be getting next time as well.

The value is very good for the options given to you. A meal will run you $6 to $7 + tax and individual tacos run $2.49+tax. Some meat options will surprise you and I suggest sampling everything to find your favorite. The only reason why I can't give this place a 5/5 is because I'm biased towards al pastor and I prefer it done a different way, but I respect the way it's done here. Next time I'll get it with the pineapple habanero salsa.

4 ½ Pineapple Piggies out of 5

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