El Cartel - Edinburgh, City of

I spend a lot of time in Texas eating TexMex and that's good food. Authentic enough to capture the favor of this kind of food, but different enough to make really speicy for this city. It is really a mix of TexMex, Mexican and South American flavors. You can't order anything wrong here. Can fill, but will take your name and number and will call you when a place is free. Take cards. ... the music is not authentic...

Lovely food and kind staff. I loved the guacamole the most, although all tacos were lovely, specially the beef tongue one. Tacos comes two and quesadillas comes three, perfect for sharing! The only reason I don’t give them 5 stars is because we needed to pop twice the same day to be able to book a table, and then we needed to wait over half an hour for it to be ready.

Our curiosity was raised some time ago when we tried to get in here for dinner but had over an hour wait for a table. “This must be good!” we speculated. So, today, we came at lunch time just after they opened and got a seat (people were in already). The verdict? Indeed this was very good Mexican street food served with the intent of having more than one dish. As we were a couple, four dishes are recommended to share but for a light lunch we got less. Everything was prepared to order and served immediately when ready. The guacamole with plantain chips was absolutely excellent. And if you’re into spicy sauces then there is a good choice which will have a great flavour as well as knock the wimp out of you. I did find the music a little off my comfort zone and perhaps not for the ears of the more sensitive, but it did not put us off the experience. We most definitely will be back here, or even the new one planned to be open soon at Bristo Square, to have our taste buds tantalised, and likely with a wee tequila to go along.

Yummy tapas!! A quirky place with some unique selection of Tapas. We had Taco de Hongos, Taco de Habas, Guacamole National. All of these were quite good. Staff was friendly as well.

I did not have reservations but they were able to fit me in with a couple in about 20 minutes. The couple I shared a table with offered me one of their Bombers and it stole the show over everything I had ordered. I like the creativity of the food and cocktail menus. I was surprised that the taco shells were soft, I wouldn’t have minded a slight crunch texture with them having been grilled slightly but overall they were good. The frijoles were sweet somehow which which wasn’t ideal but the cheese on top and crispy chips made up for it. The cocktail was a nice change and everything was reasonably priced. So nice to have decent creative, Mexican fare in Edinburgh which is severely lacking where ai live in England.