Luna Nueva

I know this place is closed but I just have to put my two cents in to add to the reasons why this place is no more.
First of all they ran out of salsa. I cannot have a mexican meal without salsa, it’s a staple. I mean seriously, what mexican place runs out of salsa! That in and of itself should have been enough to send me out the door. The refried beans tasted like they came out of a can, so bland and kinda crusty too.
The kicker was the fact that we were made, not asked, but required to leave our table and go sit at the bar in the middle of our meal because they were clearing the floor for a «party» that night. Then the wait staff charged my account twice. I had used a scoutmob and apparently they didn’t know how that worked. So so long Luna Nueva, thanks for giving another business a try, I hope the new thai place is better.

Is this place still open? Why?
There’s nothing good to say about this place except for possibly the location. This is seriously the worst Mexican food I’ve had in the city. It’s Taco Bell bad, but at much higher prices. The meat is dry, they really skimp on the tequila in the margaritas. Their selection is boring, and the presentation is totally underwhelming.
The service was adequate at best, but not enough to bump this review up to two stars.
Bottom line, you’d be better off eating at literally any other restaurant in Little 5.

Went last night for some drinks and dinner with a gal pal. The food was good, seriously good. Granted I only had wings but as an Atlanta native– I like my wings a particular way and this hit it dead on.
The drinks were mediocre. They weren’t the best and they certainly weren’t the worst but you get what you pay for right? I had a 5.00 frozen margarita and a 3.00 house margarita.
My meal total came up to 15.00 which is literally the cheapest I’ve ever paid for two drinks and some wings. I wanted to give the place 3.5 stars but Unilocal doesn’t allow that so I gave them the four instead of lowballing them.
The place is definitely a little hole in the wall and my girl and I had some entertainment as there was almost a bar fight. The funny part? There was max 10 of us lingering including the wait staff.
I really disliked the fact that they have the music box that allows you to change the music. Not only did some drunk guys make it so loud that I couldn’t hear my friend from the other end of the table but they made me hate a song that I originally enjoyed. So much so that I won’t even name it here.
I’m definitely going back for the cheap drinks and good wings. It was a good fit for a game night after Christmas weekend.
oh, P. S. The chips & salsa tasted just like the ones I had in Mexico about a week before. That says something good!

I went to Luna Nueva shortly after they opened… they didn’t have a liquor license yet, so it was a little irritating that I couldn’t have a real margarita with my dinner. The service was terrible, food was barely mediocre and the ambience was considerably lacking. Probably almost a year passed and they showed up on Scoutmob. I thought I’d give it a try to see if they’d improved any. We had a party of six for dinner. We had margaritas at the bar to start, waiting for the rest of our party to arrive. The house margarita was grossly sweet, and I couldn’t tell if it had any tequila in it at all. The bartender was fairly attentive, and friendly, but when we were ready to get a table there was no real ‘go-​to’ person to handle that for us. We asked the bartender, and he finally got someone to seat us.
We sat down, a basket of chips came, and ‘fresh’ salsa came out about ten minutes later. We had one small dish for six of us, which was irritating, not to mention that it was basically chopped tomatoes and onions… we never got another bowl of ‘fresh’ salsa. They assured us that more was on the way, because they make it fresh. We ordered a pitcher of margaritas, which was just as bad and weak as the first one. We ordered a queso, which was basically velveeta with a few chopped tomatoes mixed in… equally as mediocre.
We had a big variety of food ordered, all of which was pretty bland and unimpressive. There were about 10 other people who came and went in various stages while we were there. The dining room is pretty colorful, not terrible ambience, but definitely did not feel very clean or well kept. What really killed it for me, was when I went to the restroom to wash my hands before the food came. It was DISGUSTING. There was toilet paper all over the place, the toilet and sink clearly hadn’t been scrubbed down in weeks, possibly ever. I will never go to Luna Nueva again for ANY meal. I’m all about trying a funky, dive place, especially in L5P, but really… don’t waste your time or money! I can’t believe they’ve been open as long as they have.

Bad service, food and atmosphere. Scoutmob has never steered us wrong, but this time it was way off. This place should be closed.

The worst restaurant I think I have ever been to in my whole life.
The server was rude, but the manager was even worse and had no idea how to do his job. No one sat us, had to be asked to be seated, food took forever and when it came out it was cold and didn’t come with the correct side items. I really hope they close down.

This place has really turned itself around. I recently went here for lunch, and the quality of the food and the service has definitely improved. Notable were the vegetarian tortilla soup, which was quite tasty and had a nice bit of spice to it. The veggie burrito was also pleasing; though the peppers and onions are from frozen, the rest of the vegetables were from fresh and went nicely together. The house salad could use a little work, as it’s mostly shredded iceberg and comes topped with prepackaged, sesame-​oil-​tasting tortilla shreds; a move to romaine might be a step in the right direction. This said, I asked for a box for the uneaten half of my burrito, which I never would have done before! I’ve yet to come here for dinner, so I can’t vouch for how the kitchen and the front of the house work together during busier times, but, as of this writing, I can recommend it for lunch.
I’ve had several conversations with the owner; he is obviously dedicated to making this place the best it can be and seems quite receptive to comments.
Oh, and should you come here in the evenings, the $ 3 margaritas are of decent strength and don’t taste overwhelmingly of prepackaged mix, thus exceeding my expectations for the price point.

Walked in on Saturday night 30 minutes before a concert was to start at the Variety Playhouse. In that time, I had 2 3-​dollar margaritas (pretty strong and good) and an excellent fish taco plate.
The staff was very understanding of our rush and helped us out. Attentive service and the food was quite good. I definitely recommend this place.

Ugh, really bad… Bad service (good effort?), bad overpriced food. Never coming here again.
I came here with friends on a Friday night, and at first I got a good impression — the atmosphere was nice and open, wasn’t too crowded, there was a live band playing, and we were seated quickly. The waitress was nice enough. But it all went downhill from there.
The salsa they provide with the chips is runny and flavorless. (But we did finish it, and the waitress was good about offering us more when it was gone.) I ordered horchata and it was watery, not creamy, and weak in flavor. Also, the kitchen was out of both barbacoa and lamb.
I ordered carnitas for $ 12.95. Overpriced. Bad. It was SO dry, with no sauce whatsoever… a little odd, considering the waitress had asked if I wanted red or green sauce (I asked for red). The meat came with rice, refried beans, and melted cheese. The refried beans were runny, and I personally thought the ratio of rice/​beans to meat was off. The worst part was that the menu had described the carnitas as coming with guacamole… and it didn’t come with guacamole. (I know I wasn’t wrong about the guacamole, because it was a major reason why I chose carnitas in the first place.) When I asked for the missing guacamole, the waitress brought me… tortillas. I gave up.
When the bill came, the waitress kindly split it for us and we appreciated it. Except she didn’t do it clearly or correctly and we spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out what she had written and why, for example, someone who had ordered a $ 10-​ish meal was being charged $ 22 or so.
Oh, and during the meal one of the band members came to our table asking for donations. Not that weird in and of itself, but it just felt uncomfortable because he stood there for a good little while, looking around at each of us. Then when he only got a couple bucks, the rest of our time there he was shooting us dirty looks.
I spent some years in Southern California and maybe I have gotten spoiled with great, cheap, fresh, authentic Mexican food there. But I really, really, really hope there’s better Mexican in Atlanta than this.

On a road trip from San Diego to Outer Banks, stayed in Atlanta for 2 days. After heading out of the 420 fest at the park drunk and hungry, that native San Diegan craving for Mexican food started to kick in. We saw this place and decided to have dinner here. Most of the servers seemed to be from Bangledesh which was odd but doesn’t matter. They had a DJ playing some good funk music. But let’s get to the food.
First our server was really nice and friendly, but he forgot to place our order of queso fundido. The entrees seemed a little expensive. I ordered the flautas and they seemed a little bland. The carne asada seemed like it wasn’t seasoned… that’s what carne asada is, SEASONED beef. A cheap pitcher of margarita saved the day.
Overall the food was alright. During our road trip it was the best Mexican food I had west of Texas, which isn’t really saying much, but what can you expect? I know one thing the breakfast joints we hit up are way better than in San Diego but that’s for another review…

After playing a mean game of whiffle ball outside the sweetwater festival and consuming Tecate’s all the live-​long day, I thought it was only appropriate to eat some mexican food for dinner!
I typically can tell if a mexican place is up to speed by tasting their salsa… and their salsa was pretty good.
They had a pretty good menu… no combination plates or speedy gonzalez’s…a good sign!
I wanted tacos and they had a good selection of ‘em…BUT you can’t mix ‘em up? WHAAAA? Malo, Malo! It worked out though because my buddies also wanted to try a combo of tacos –so we traded.
The pastor tacos? –great!
The lamb tacos? –pretty tasty!
The shrimp tacos? –they were shrimp tacos… nothing special.
The Dos Equis Amber? Cold.
I’d go back but they gotta arrange it so you can get a combo tacos plate!
Until then, 3 stars.

Way overpriced for the quality of food. To order a variety of three tacos it came to about $ 15. The less expensive standard taco plate does not allow mixing, so you get all chicken, all beef, etc.
The fish taco and chorizo tacos were both decent. The lamb taco didn’t have the right flavor. Seemed to be simply a lamb stew served in a tortilla.
The margaritas were quite good. The guacamole was decent, nothing special.
Overall not a bad place, but for the prices they charge it could be better.

Yikes! Stay away! The service is horrible. I went here with four friends. After making a mistake on my friend’s order, our waitress returned her plate to the kitchen – wherein SHE FOUGHT WITH THE COOK IN FRONT OF US! They engaged in a 5 – 8 minute yelling match.
The food is a notch up from Taco Bell, but nothing special. The cheese dip is disgusting and over-​priced. The texture of the cheese dip is nasty. Beware of the $ 5.95 guacamole. The tortilla-​chicken soup is creamy– ???
Definitely not recommended unless you are in a huge party of 10+ people because of the abundant space due to a noticeable lack of customers.

I live near EAV and ever since the slow sad decline, and ultimate demise, of one of my local favs La Casita, I’ve been looking for another decent Mexican joint close to my home. We happened to be near L5P last night and I remembered this upstairs restaurant that I had visited ages ago — was it Colombian? Mexican? — no matter, I recalled it had salsa and chips so we walked past the strip of Euclid Avenue stores, and up the stairs to Luna Nueva.
The restaurant was virtually empty when we arrived — one lone dude at a booth — we took that as a bad sign but the friendly waitress welcomed us so we stayed. The décor is standard Mexicali-​chic, with a concrete water fountain in the middle, a few colorful posters, spacious booths and tables in the middle. One huge plus for the ambience was the music: most of what played while we were there was sexy bachata, rawr. So much better than cahunto music, the accordian-​heavy Northern Mexico polka music you sometimes hear.
The food was EXCELLENT. Seriously. I haven’t Unilocaled in a while because I don’t like knocking someone’s hard work, plus I’m getting busy and lazy, but the food was great enough that I felt compelled to share my experience. First of all, their menu offerings are pretty authentic, or what I know authentic to be having lived in Houston for many years and traveled in Mexico multiple times.
The salsa was fresh, savory, not too spicy and super delicious. We also tried the fried sweet plaintains with cinnamon and condensed milk dipping sauce to start — not quite as good as I recall them being when I first tried this dish in Playa Zipolite in Mexico, but great nonetheless and I was just grateful it was even on the menu. The entrees were fabulous. Husband ordered the Chile Rellenos (large bell peppers stuffed with cheese, beef with a savory sauce on top) and I had fish and pork tacos. Of course, we were also given a plate of Mexican rice and refried beans.
Prices are low. The waitress tells us they have a loyal group of repeat customers that keep the restaurant going. I really think this is an unknown gem, and probably the best of all the Mexican restaurants I’ve tried (EAV, Kirkwood, Oakhurst, or Decatur — sorry Taqueria del Sol). Towards the end of the night we realized the reason for the lack of customers: this place doesn’t have a liquor license. But the waitress tells us they’ve just gotten one and pointed out the bar that has been built. She promised to serve me a margarita the next time we visit. We plan on visiting very soon, so if you’re reading this, I like mine on the rocks with no salt.

This totally has to be a front for some illegal operation. It is the poorest excuse for a restaurant that I have ever seen.
No alcohol license after being open for many months.
Disappointing food. Overall extremely mediocre. Even the things one possibly couldn’t mess-​up, like re-​fried beans… Runny and disgusting.
The cool space is the only thing this place has going for it. I wish someone else would take over and rebuild this restaurant from scratch, because I will not spend another second or dime in Luna Nueva.

I agree with Jack C that I wish we had read reviews before we strolled in here and I agree with T.S. that this place seems more like a cover for some nefarious operation (giant red warning light in the middle of the ceiling!)
When we got there Friday night, there were only about 4 other tables taken, 2 of which left right after we got there, and yet the 2 servers could not handle the 4 – 5 tables. We waited 15 – 20 min. just for our order to be taken, although a couple who came in after us had theirs taken immediately. Unfortunately for them, they did not get their food until we had finished eating and were paying our check. How is that even possible?
The waitress was very odd. We ordered a starter of guacamole and we had already finished our chips & salsa and she actually asked if we wanted more chips. Um, no, we’ll just eat the guacamole with our fingers.
The «starter» of guacamole did not come out until we got our meal and was ROTTEN! Black, disgusting, rotten guacamole. How can someone, in good conscience, serve that? The Diet Coke I ordered didn’t come until halfway through the meal and only had about 3 ice cubes in it.
The chicken quesadilla I had tasted very similar to ones I’ve had at Applebee’s or Chili’s – that’s NOT a compliment – and the chicken was gray.
And yes, they’ve been open at least 8 months and STILL don’t have a liquor license. A faded, worn out banner hanging on the back wall promises that the liquor license is «coming soon» but really, what’s the hold up?
I truly do not understand how this place is still open.

This place doesn’t even deserve to be reviewed, and it especially doesn’t deserve to be a restaurant.
Unless you like damp, swampy places to eat, then don’t eat here. The atmosphere is terrible, and the ceiling drips. I felt like roaches were going to crawl out of the fountain, (which is filled with soggy sand) at any moment. The management seemed pretty awful because the service is awful. One server — doing everything??? Give me a break.
I will not be coming back here mostly because it’s not going to last very long. Hopefully L5p will get a good restaurant to move into this spot.

My husband and I live in the neighborhood and were happy to see a new Mexican restaurant because we are NOT fans of La Fondas even though we could walk there.
We rode our bikes to L5P to try this place out. I was pleasantly surprised at the size and décor, and hoped that this would be foreshadowing for the food. No such luck.
We arrived early, so there weren’t any other patrons there. We learned that they had not obtained their liquor license yet, so margaritas were off the table.
Not knowing what to order, I asked the cute, punky waitress for her recommendation. She quickly suggested the fish tacos and said that it came with a flavorful sauce. I eat fish tacos frequently at Taqueria del Sol and enjoy them every time, so I decided to see how these compared. They had a special on the back of the menu that gave you a choice of 3 entrée items for a reasonable price, so my hubby and I both ordered that.
When the food came, there was no sauce at all on the tacos. I had a bite and it was so bland! The other items that I ordered were a relleno which was soggy, and some other item that was so unmemorable, I can’t even remember what it was.
Basically, the whole meal was very disappointing. I saw that they had a rice pudding on the dessert list and was looking forward to ordering something that you can’t really mess up. As Punky came by with the check, I asked for the pudding which she said they didn’t have. What a waste. I would rather have gone to Taco Bell. It may not be great, but I would have left full, satisfied, and with more money in my pocket!
The one good thing I can say about the place was that they had a reggae/​African band-​3 guys with tight harmony and a guitar. They were terrific, but they didn’t have any CDs for sale, and the waitress didn’t even know the name of the group. I dropped some cash in their tip bucket and considered that the best spent money of the evening.
I won’t be going back.

Salsa: not salsa. I’ve not been to Mexico (though it seems that a lot of Mexico is in the United States), but I presume salsa is not orange, warm, and flavorless. Like my Energon Sword, but useless.
Meat tacos too stuffed with vegetables. We have no meat on Cybertron, and as a new carnivore, I’m afraid of places that advertise meat in items but fill with vegetables instead. What if I become vegetarian? Scary…
Ironhide almost fired his cannons into his food to get it spicy enough, but I had to remind him it would set the place on fire. And then I thought, hmm… Nah!
No flavor, slow service. Megatron’s behind this one, I suspect…

Pitifully dreadful place if you are looking for warm food and good service.
We were greeted and gifted water and chips & salsa almost immediately. We ordered the queso dip and it took 20 minutes to get it to the table and once there it was just out of the jar temperature and gritty. We kept asking for someone to take our food order. After sending back the queso dip (still no one took our main course order) and receiving it back at the table in its original state, we walked out.
I work in L5p, and I can guarantee there will not be a return visit of any kind to this place.