El Huasteco

Excellent food at a great price. My favorite so far! From the cheese dip and salsa, to the soup… authentic in every bite.

Being a local In Jefferson I’ve seen many restaurants come and go and fail miserably since there isn’t much a food scene going on here. But if I eat locally (which I never really do) this is hands down the only place I will eat. The chicken or steak fajita got platter can feed 2 very well and is only 17 bucks. You can’t beat that at all. Something so simply not over done at all, not over or under seasoned and not bland at all. I’d also recommend asking for this red sauce they have, I can’t remember what they call it but it’s good on everything !!

This is a small family owned restaurant. I’ve been eating there for years. They continue to improve which I admire greatly. The food and drink prices are really reasonable. Their enchilada Verde’s is the best I’ve ever had. The Flavor of the Carnitas is excellent. They also have a dish called molcajete, this dish has chorizo, chicken and beef. It has cheese quesadilla, Anaheim chiles and green onion. The Carnitas and the molcajete are both large dishes. We typically order extra tortillas and share the dish.
This is not a slick chain restaurant so don’t be surprised when you see the creative way they handled the construction of the restaurant!

We moved to Jefferson recently. Being of Mexican descent, my family and I set out to try all the Mexican places in Jefferson in the hope of finding food half as good as Mamacita used to make. Now, in 40 years of living in Los Angeles, I never found a restaurant to compare to Mamacita’s food, so the chances in Jefferson are slim. But one can hope.
El Huasteco isn’t the place. I read the reviews — small place, friendly, family run — and I got my hopes up. Maybe the evening we went was an off night. My son ordered a combination with an enchilada and a chile relleno, and got an unfried, rolled-​up tortilla with no filling and some red sauce on top. The chile relleno was a slop with some cheese, meat and strips of chile, but bearing no resemblance to any chile I’ve seen.
Now the true chile relleno is a work of art. The chile, generally a Poblano, is roasted and peeled, filled with cheese, and fried in an egg batter. You can put meat in it if you want — carne deshebrada is good — but you can’t leave out the cheese.
El Jinete leaves out the egg batter and the cheese, doesn’t peel the chile, and puts spiced hamburger meat inside, so it doesn’t really taste right, although the other dishes we tried there were pretty good.
El Centinela leaves out the egg batter but at least you can get it with cheese. The chile relleno arrived after we were blasted with banda music at pain-​inducing levels for 20 minutes, and this torture continued while we ate. Maybe they’ve discovered that norteña music at full volume drives patrons to drink.
But at Jinete and Centinela, the chile relleno at least looks like a chile. Who knows what we got at El Huasteco.
As best I can tell, this place appeals to drinkers. The staff prepares huge margaritas and delivers them with a great deal of joshing and tomfoolery. This is what passes for friendliness. If you not a drinker, they’re not much interested in you. The food seems secondary as well.