La Iguana

La Iguana is a Mexican restaurant smack dab in the middle of Hamilton. It’s decent sized, has plenty of tables and a full bar! They have The BEST frozen margaritas hands down!!! (THEY’RE SUPER STRONG!!) & So many flavors. Mango (my fav), strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, and others!!! I’ve been here a few times, and it gets better every time I come!
I met one of my girlfriends for dinner tonight (11÷13÷15) around 8pm– the place was packed! And loud! We got a high top seat by the bar (where we usually sit). Our waitress took a good 10 minutes to come over and take our drink order, but quite honestly I didn’t mind because we weren’t in a rush and we were just chatting. (That’s the good thing about going out with your girlfriends, you’re so busy chatting you don’t even notice the slow service). Because if I was with my boyfriend he would probably throw a fit. Our waitress was super polite and cool. I didn’t catch her name. The whole staff here is great.
They serve tortilla chips and salsa to munch on before the meal. The salsa is a little too spicy for my taste but I ate some anyway.
For my meal I tried the salmon roll. Basically a flour tortilla with blackened salmon, lettuce, bacon, onions and chipotle mayo. Can I just emphasize on how FREAKIN HUGE THIS ROLL WAS!!! Holy crap it could feed a family of 5 no joke. Also comes with a side of rice and black beans. The rice was a little dry but mixed in with the beans MMMmmmmm so good! The whole dish was excellent. I could only eat ¼ of the salmon roll so I took the rest home.
GET THE MANGO MARGARITA. ITS sooo tasty, and you’ll feel the buzz after your first drink! Lol
I had dinner and drinks for $ 23. La iguana is one of my top 3 favorite places to eat in Hamilton! Definitely recommended!

Love La Iggy! As a former Colgate student, I have been here for countless drinks, birthday dinners, sorority events, and took my parents here when they came to visit. I have tried most of their items on the menu and my favorites are the carne asada burrito and the yuca fries! Fried ice cream and tres leches cake are good dessert options. The taco salad and la iguana salad are also good if you are in the mood for lighter fare. They are super generous with the chips and salsa which is a plus. I also LOVE their flavored frozen margaritas, and I miss the prices now that I live in NYC :/
The only reason I gave this place 4 *s instead of 5 are because the service is super slow, and I am not a big fan of the sangria or enchiladas. That being said, I still do recommend because everything else on their menu is delicious!

Well, that handsome SOB in my profile pic with me is now my husband, and we got hitched in Hamilton. Having met there and attended the opening night of La Iguana together, we thought it’d be fantastic to hold our rehearsal dinner at La Iguana.
Oh, how right we were!
The drinks were scrumptious, the appetizers were tasty and plentiful (not to mention beautifully arrayed), the service was excellent, and the meals were, of course, phenomenal.
The best part, though, is that the owner, Mary, was amazing to work with. She has all kinds of creative ideas, and she is a straight shooter: no tricks, no BS, and no gouging (which all too many folks will try to pull just on account of an event being wedding-​related).
Overall, the flexibility, quality service, and honest dealing were deeply impressive. Could not be happier with our choice — if you want to host an event, La Iguana is highly recommended!

Service is wretched. Waited an hour and a half for food. Can’t deny, food’s damn good.

The food here is outstanding, more on that in a bit. We chose the worst (as in packed tables with very loud patrons celebrating a milestone birthday) night to ever go. Top it off with homecoming weekend and we lowered the bar. Despite all the we had attentive and apologetic service!
We’ve been here to eat a couple of times and like my first sentence suggests. This is why you should return. As Mexican food goes they did veer from the tried and true but that’s a good thing. I absolutely love their steak. They’ve figured out the best way to get just enough chiles to make it work.

I was visiting my sister for the weekend and she said mexican or something else and i was like. mexican in central ny? umm okay. It isn’t awful, but it is pretty bleak.
The salsa that comes with the chips is like tomato paste from a can. The guacamole was good and chunky. I ordered the veggie burrito after my sister nixed a few of the other menu items. It was bland, dry, and lacking any substantial amount of veggies. I mean, I ate it but I wouldn’t recommend it. The margs were fine, typical mix flavor.
The service was fast but my sister said it is usually slow. Overall, nothing stands out about the place or on the menu.

La Iguana is a great place to stop in Hamilton for Mexican. The food was great but I am always looking for an experience. And my experience here was that they had Yucca Fries. I had never had Yucca Fries so it was a delight to try them. They were seasoned in house and they were fantastic. Pricing was great, the décor was modern southwestern, and the place was very clean.

I’ve only been here a few times, but in spite of all things that it has going for it (cute place, really nice owners, one of the very few things in town that’s not a bar and not pizza), I’m always disappointed. I think the best way of putting it is that every dish I’ve gotten here has basically just been equal to the sum of its parts. Veggies enchiladas? Yup, that’s what corn, zucchini, a tortilla, and some green sauce taste like together. Burritos also kind of fail to blend, with cold cheese not really melted amidst the rice and beans. And the salsa is very bland, somehow. Not bland as in «lacking heat» bland– it does actually have a little bit of heat (though not much). Bland as in «are those actually tomatoes» bland. Maybe it’s a sign that they actually make their own salsa, and are at the mercy of bland factory tomatoes shipped across the country for most of the year. At any rate, they do have plenty of hot sauce available, which is good in such circumstances.
We really really really wish the owners would put some Brazilian dishes on the menu! They had some once as a special over the summer (they are evidently from Brazil), but the regular menu focuses on generic and sort of unthrilling Mex-​American stuff instead. :(
On the bright side, the draft beer choices aren’t bad!