El Portal

Expensive.
I understand that this place is in a college campus building. Thus the need your reaction is for the owner to jack the prices up to the roof because they think they have a captive audience. However, this place is ridiculous.
The food isn’t that amazing. They don’t even offer ground beef option on their tacos.

I happened to walk in on my way to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. The service was very, very helpful and the red burrito was wonderful. Low prices.

I eat here every week. The bean and cheese burrito and the quesadilla are my favorites. The staff is friendly and the food comes out quick, which is nice for my breaks between classes.

This place really doesn’t even deserve a star at all, I don’t know why this place is still open. It doesn’t feel like a Mexican restaurant one bit, Taco Bell food tastes better then this place. And the prices a marked up because there isn’t any other Mexican food around the area. It’s 4 dollars for a bean and cheese burrito and it’s the smallest 4 dollar burrito I’ve ever seen. There is no creativity, no uniqueness to the food and I would rather there be a Taco Bell in this spot then this place, I think ASU Students deserve better prices and better tasting food. Put a Taco Bell in or even better a filibertos!

Updated look! Food is awesome. Give them a try if you haven’t already. They installed an ice tea dispenser! Service is good. Food is very tasty and good sized portions. Price is right! Two cheese enchilada, beans, rice, small side salad for less than six bucks. You can’t beat that!!!
I love seeing this place busier and busier each week.

Wow. Okay, so I’m an asu student, and frequently I go to the local eating establishments when I’m here. Now I see myself as a foodie, often branching out from name brands and trying most of the local food places around here.
And let me tell you, this place is sub par at best.
The menu is limited, most of the meats on the menu ranging from beef to, well, beef. As it was my first time here, I got the beef tacos with guac with a canned coke. Prices were average, but no receipt was provided or even asked. The attitude of the cashier was mediocre, mostly with a face like he didn’t want to be here seeing how he was frequently walking back to the tv, even answering his phone and holding a conversation while providing my change.
The food itself was presented average for a traditional Mexican place. Two tacos, with meat, guac, lettuce, and diced tomatoes (I had requested no cheese) with a side of their red salsa. After the first bite, it was down hill and disappointing. The meat was poorly seasoned (which was a disappointment seeing how it’s the only meat featured and not written on the whiteboard), the guac tasted like mashed avocados with no flavor, and the lettuce and tomatoes mushy and easily disposed and forgotten. Their red salsa was tasteless — not spicy or savory, tasting vaguely like tobacco briefly before disappearing all together.
Honesty, with places like bowl of greens right next to this place, whose flavor and presentation exceeds here by ten folds, you’re better off just going there.

What in the world happened here? This place used to be good, with the usual and expected full menu of American-​ized Mexican takeout food, including beef, chicken, pork and other options in tacos, burritos, tostadas, enchiladas. Today, their only choices are beef or bean. That’s a weird choice (or lack of choices) for a Mexican Grill like this. On top of that, they don’t accept M&G (the currency used by ASU students who have meal plans), their CO2 was out so their soda fountain wasn’t working, they had no bottled water and the water cup I was offered never materialized. The décor is lacking (practically non-​existent), and this place doesn’t deserve another try. Sadly, I suspect they’ll be closed and replaced by something more appropriate for the traffic in due time!

Super inexpensive — Lightning quick service — great people. cheek out the Mary-​Rose special (calabasitas). It was AWESOME

The only plus about this place is that it’s convenient. Other than that, it sucks. The first time I went here will definitely be my last.
The food is sub-​par, even for a fast food place. I ordered the chicken quesadilla and it was a sloppy mess. Some slices had wayyy too much chicken and in some there were barely any slices. And I couldn’t tell if the chicken was really even chicken. It was very rubbery. I can get better quesadillas for way cheaper.
The atmosphere is very cheap. There are generic tables and stools, one soda machine, and then there are plastic barrels of different fruit juices. It actually looks like an incomplete restaurant. And the way the fruit juices are served is questionable. The cashier takes a soup ladle and pours the drink into a cup, then wipes the ladle with a generic kitchen towel. Not hygienic at all.
The service is slow. There was only one cashier and one cook working when I went there, and this was during lunch hour. I waited 15 minutes for my food, which I had ordered to-​go.
Just don’t go here. There are better places close by.

I used to come here on Tuesday’s for grad school after I got tired of the neighboring meal options. I always got a chicken quesadilla and on two different occasions I had bone in my quesadilla. The first was more annoying that harmful, but the second time I was absolutely awestruck. How do you not notice a chicken bone that size? It was also sharp and I feel lucky that I was not hurt. See my picture and you’ll understand why I have never been back.

This is one of those places that is just convenient for me. It’s so-​so. The service is slow. I kind of like their beans and the red enchilada sauce. I would never go out of my way to eat here. In fact, I’m not sure why I eat here, but I do sometimes. Don’t judge me.

I have been to El Portal multiple times and I really am not sure why. I think it has to do with the fact that there aren’t a ton of options within a 2 minute walk of work.
I try to go at slightly off hours to avoid the lunchtime rush and at least haven’t had any issues with service, although a good number of the tables usually seem pretty filthy and haven’t been wiped off.
The food is pretty bland and uninteresting. I usually get a couple enchiladas, and the sauce, beans, rice, everything, just kind of melds together into a one-​note bland mess. I guess I shouldn’t be expecting much though when the food is so cheap. I guess that’s a positive. One time the rice was under cooked and crunchy… I still ate it.
Unless you are starving, want Mexican food (if you can call it that) and are within a 2 minute walk I don’t really see a reason to go here. Unfortunately, I seem to meet those 3 criteria every now and then.

If I could give this place negative stars I would.
I came in here hoping to prove most os the Unilocal reviews wrong, boy did that not work out.
I ordered a Chorizo and egg burrito. First off, there were barely any eggs in it, unless their eggs are brown. Second, this might have been the greasiest thing I have ever eaten. I could barely pick the thing up without it leaking juice from the bottom. Finally it tasted like absolutely nothing. It literally tasted they just threw in cardboard and grease in a tortilla. Awful!
Also about an hour after eating it, my stomach felt awful afterwards. I had the worst stomach ache until I used the bathroom.
All in all, subway is right next door to this place. You’d be much better off going there.
AVOID AT ALL COSTS!

El Hefe and I were initially on our way to the fleet of food trucks but then discovered our days were off. Food Trucks are on Wednesdays and today was Tuesday. What a mixer-​roo!
El Portal would have to do, an unfortunate to do at that.
The service is deplorable! The counter expediter was a hot mess. He even addressed me as «Hey You» when my order was ready. Seriously, what the «Number 2» is up with that?! The gals that were behind us in line were treated with an even lower grade of service. Now that didn’t make me feel special at all.
I ordered the two (chicken) taco combo and only one taco contained any meat product. I left hungry.
No bueno: (

I’ve visited El Portal about seven or eight times because of its reasonably priced food and proximity to the journalism school. But the food is so-​so and the service has ranged from terrible to OK.
El Portal has cheap daily specials. The portions are huge. Make sure to indicate what kind of meat you want in your food. They normally didn’t ask me.
The seating area is spacious and they have a TV.
The service is lacking, but I think they’re trying to work on it. But don’t expect them to stay open until their posted hours. The cashier once told me they close shop 30 minutes before closing time if there aren’t any customers.

For the love of god, would someone open a Berto’s of some kind downtown? I will literally give you a million dollars. I will do it $ 6 at a time in exchange for delicious carnitas burritos and so will thousands of others.
El Portal was sortof el crappy. The service was lackluster and the food meh.
«I think we are out of carne asada. Yeah we are out of carne asada.»
How does that happen? Then the green chili was sortof a greenish mush of blahness and no one trained them to wrap a burrito.
I also got a quesadilla which promptly leaked yellow tinged grease onto my pants from boring yellow cheese in a boring tortilla.
I also hate a tip line on a receipt from a place where you order your food at the counter and pick it up at the counter and fill your own drinks.
And why did everyone else have real plates while mine was a Dixie?
Subway is next door.

Every 5 months or so I end up here, not because I really want to but because I don’t have time to go somewhere else better. Each time I eat here it reminds me of why I avoid it in the first place.
I’ve tried several things on the menu and basically everything is horrible. By far the worst thing is their rice. Its a real problem for a Mexican place when I (who is not Mexican) makes better Mexican rice than they do. It is oily, without any flavor and today it was undercooked — meaning it was still hard. Disgusting.
Its a real shame that a place like Carolina’s isn’t in this location — you know a place that actually makes enjoyable food.
Do yourself a favor and make the drive to Carolina’s or El Commadore, but if you don’t have time for that, grab a microwave burrito at the Circle K and it will be better than this place.

When you get the simplest mexican foods to taste similar to cardboard, you are doing something quite wrong. Perhaps, grease isn’t a seasoning?
Pretty much the only thing going for this place is its location in the bottom of ASU’s Cronkite School downtown.

If you own a Mexican restaurant, how on earth can you mess up beans?!?
There’s nothing worse than going to a Mexican restaurant and their beans have no flavor WHAT-​SO-​EVER. To add to my disappointment, the chicken tacos I ordered were saturated with grease and lacked flavor too.
I hope the owner reads this because she needs to have the cook taste the food he’s preparing before they serve it. Salt is your friend! Maybe even some pepper and garlic if you’re adventurous.
Thank God for the little bit of salsa they gave me, it was the only thing to make my tacos edible. I ended up tossing the frijoles in the garbage. What a waste of food!

«Beans are Money»
Just opened yesterday, the new El Portal is nestled inside the Walter Cronkite building of Jounalism in the downtown ASU campus.
food is as awesome as the location down on Grant. more of a quick service atmosphere. gonna make this my go to mexican joint because its well within walking distance.