Rafael Taco House

On a recent road trip I needed to pull over for some food. I was tired of eating at food chains. I decided to give my patronage to a local restaurant. I found Raphael’s Taco House only a block away from my route. I really wanted to like Rafael Taco House.
Rafael’s is directly across from a Taco Bell. Certainly, they will have to do things better in order to compete.
The food, service, and ambiance should blow Taco Bell out of the water. In fact, the restaurant is clean and contemporary. It’s brightly lit and modern. The staff was very friendly, and seemed happy. The food just isn’t very good. Maybe I ordered the wrong items.
The beef hard shell tacos are very similar to your traditional Taco Bell taco. However, it was a little bigger, a little fresher, and a little beefier. The taco sauce was fine too. It was a fine taco.
My big mistake was ordering the cheese enchilada. Imagine taking a tortilla and filling it with cheddar and black olives and very bad tomato sauce, and melting it in the microwave. Not good.
I might go back here for a taco instead of Taco Bell. I won’t be ordering the enchiladas. There are much better authentic taco’s in the area.

After leaving beautiful downtown Burbank, I rolled into Kennewick on my way back to Seattle looking for an authentico taqueria. Rafael’s is not really an authentico taqueria because no Mexicans work here, at least when I checked in. I ordered a chicken strip burrito, which I would describe as more of a wrap; a couple nice pieces of deep fried chicken strips, lettuce, salsa, and some excellent sauce wrapped in a flour tortilla. It was good but definitely not Mexican. Friendly staff, good service, but a little slow with the food. If you’re looking for authentic Mexican food, this is not the place. If you’re looking for good food this is an OK place.

This is a newly opened Place… The Manager said this is their second location here in the Tri-​Cities. I had the Steak Burito… It was pretty good the steak was very tender… He told me to get the Soft Corn Tortilla salad for my side coz they do it and its fresh everyday. He was right, it was pretty good and you can taste that its really fresh.
Nothing fancy about the place… it was set up like a fastfood type, plastic silverwares and styro plates… I was thinking the food would be cheaper since its not really set up like a regular Restaurant but I guess they need to make their own money too. The Soda was reasonable though and you get free refills.
The staff were friendly… We would probably come back to try other stuff.