Mexicali Border Cafe

I always try to find the healthiest item on the menu and I chose the veggie fajitas with corn tortillas and guacamole at Mexicali Border Café. What a disappointment. The veggies were floating in grease. I was able to tip the skillet and make about ¼ cup of oil roll off but there is no telling how much had already soaked in. The waitress, who was awesome, said next time I could tell them to leave off some kind of buttery gravy (yuk — who knew?) that they put on the veggies. This buttery gravy should be disclosed on the menu. You’d think less oil would be a preference for anyone who has chosen veggie fajitas. The margaritas ALL have Julio’s Secret Mix (aka refined sugar syrup) but, if you get a good bartender, you can ask for an off-​menu, skinny margarita that is very good. (But only certain bartenders know how to make them.)

Overall good food. Good service be the desserts here look great! I ordered the fish tacos. They were good and I ate the chipotle sauce on the side. Overall I’d order this dish again!

Ordered the beef enchilada plate and was not very pleased. Food was bland but the wait staff was great.

I can’t say I was overly impressed. There were people waiting to be seated when there were more than plenty of tables open. Once I was seated and made my order the food was delivered fast! I got the most basic thing you can get– enchilada & a taco so I can’t say it was much different than any other place. I’d come back for the amazing looking. Margaritas though!

I’ve had better Mexican and although this place seems always packed, their food is pretty lack-​luster middle of the road boring safe mexican. I’ve had good mexican food so I just look for more than chips and salsa with meat tacos and side of rice. I want flavor and heat and this place just didn’t have it. Nothing ew, nothing wow, nothing worth stopping in if you’re visiting from out of town for sure. Try Elotes. :-)

Tastes like chain food. Average at best.
$ 7 for a little plate of bland guacamole is ridiculous. The tortilla soup– is cream cheese crema– not SOUP! It was too rich to eat.
Not special. Salsa is very tomatoey– pretty disappointing.
Save your money and go to Chuys for some REAL tex-​mex.

Mexi-​Cali is easily the worst restaurant in the Brady arts district. The food is very processed and bland and doesn’t come close to comparing to their neighbors in terms of quality. Not only that, the management is really rude. I’m a resident of the district and almost all the businesses here are friendly and try to watch out for each other. Not Mexi-​Cali. The lot is almost always empty, but they will throw a fit if you park there just to unload groceries on a busy night. I personally never eat there, but now am writing this review to encourage others not to because of the terrible experiences I’ve had not only as a patron but also a neighbor. Your lot will continue to be empty as long as you don’t up your quality game in both food and being a neighbor.

There’s much better food to eat than this place downtown, keep clear. I will say our waiter was great and was cracking jokes, but other than that foods bland across the board, and their Borracho Beans were weird… like out of a can and they put alcohol in it and forgot to cook it out weird.

The Wet Burrito was good. Also, get the Horny Margarita! It’s sweet but not too sweet, sweet enough that you can taste the liquor that much. Still makes you feel good. The burrito melts in your mouth, with the white queso, beef, & refried beans. Topped with cilantro & enchilada gravy. Comes with rice & beans. Stuffed me! I added chipotle to it, which added more flavor & made it more enjoyable. They have a pretty good lunch menu.

Had stacked enchiladas based on waitress recommendation. Mediocre at best…
Enchiladas were little oily and lacked any distinctive flavor.
Beans were obviously microwaved; warm on outside of bowl and cold in middle.
Rice was so so.
Not bad, but not good. If you are in the neighborhood for an event then it is worth trying. But do not make this your destination.

Some might say I am a picky eater and yes I must agree. Not only am I picky about the food but the environment from the friendliness of staff to the cleanliness of the building. I must say Mexicali passed my pickiness test. Our waiter was more than entertaining and accommodating. There was ten of us in the group and I did not catch his name. He was patient and our food and drinks arrived with quickness. He ensure our glasses did not get empty from water to adult drink glasses. The 1800 Gold drink is smooth and comes in a extremely large glass. I do not recommend more than two. I had the shrimp special which was spicy and included gravy, rice, jalapeño peppers and cheese. Cannot recall the name however it was extremely tasty. Special thanks to our workshop host for taking the group and if you are in Tulsa stop by Mexicali Border Café for great food and drinks!

Came here for the Hop Fest got seated right away. Ordered cheese enchiladas. Fresh chips and salsa served right away. Enchiladas were tasty, right temperature, service was quick. Nice place to go in the arts district to take a break from activities.

Rating given simply because of really stupid seating policies. Refuse to sit you till your entire party shows up (7 out of 8 of us were here), even though we were ready to order for all 8 people. Refuse to allow you to order your appetizers etc while you wait as well.
I’d love to be able to talk about the food.. but at this point, it’s just not going to happen.
UPDATE:
Manager reached out apologising for the experience, offering internal rules etc. for rationale. Kudos for the straight up apologies and the ‘if you come back, we will try to make sure you have a better experience’ — I really do appreciate that, and I may take them up on it.
However, although I understand the need for rules to maximise efficiency, if not properly set in place, they can negatively impact customer experience, as it did for me.
Strictly speaking, as a customer, I am really not at all concerned with a venue’s internal efficiencies, with what makes it tick, with it’s profit margins or anything. All I care about, as a customer, is a good experience, great food and good prices. And unfortunately, in this case, the venue did not deliver.

Mexicali is the best. The queso and guacamole is a must get. And I love their fajitas and enchiladas. I’ve always had good service here.

Not my favorite place for Mexican food. The plus side, their queso is very tasty. I love the set up, they have a nice open floor plan and the location is great, very close to the Brady. I ordered enchiladas which were practically smothered in grease. I got the beef enchilada and a spinach enchilada. The spinach enchilada had yellow queso on top of it which is not the best paring, usually it comes with the white. Also as an added bonus you could tell it came from frozen spinach, it was kind of just chunks of spinach inside of a tortilla, not much seasoning or anything done to it at all. The service was decent though so I did enjoy that. My kids got corndogs so there’s nothing really to rate there. Not sure if I’ll go back but it wont be my first stop if I’m craving Mexican food.

A good place for lunch at a downtown restaurant, but this is not one of my more favorite downtown Tulsa places to dine. I would call the food typical Mexican.
The service has always been good and there’s plenty of parking out front.

I’ve been eating here for years out of convenience. The close proximity to the BOK, Cain’s Ballroom, and The Brady Theater make it a great place to stop and get a bite to eat before a show. The food is Mediocre, not bad. The service is fast and the prices are very reasonable. They will get you in and out in 45 min or less usually.
I am going back for another concert in May, I will be looking forward to another meal here. As it has become tradition.

Pretty basic tex-​mex food. But I always sit at the bar for lunch and the bartender always remembers me and exactly what I want to order… they make a special veggie burrito. Definitely somewhere I make an effort to take people to.

I had a hankering for tacos while some friends and I were in town for a day trip, so Mexicali’s seemed appropriate. And happily enough, their tacos satisfied my craving — I had fish tacos with mango pico de gallo and avocado salsa. So yummy. The chipotle queso we had with our chips was delicious as well. A Beerita was had to top it all off, and man, it was gooooood.
Now, if the food hadn’t been so good, I would’ve given them less stars. The service was not the greatest. It was 2 o clock on a Sunday afternoon and both the restaurant and patio were empty, and yet, it took for-​ev-​er for our drinks, queso, food, and checks to arrive. Like I said, the place was practically empty so the hold up was quite strange.

I visited Mexicali recently with my husband and his parents. We’re not complicated customers; we expect our drinks to be refilled when they get super low, and for our food to come out how we ordered it. Other than that we’re easy going. We saw our waitress twice — once when she took our order, and the second time was when she dropped off our ticket. The rest of the time we had a few other servers bringing out our queso, bringing out our food, and refilling our drinks. When we did see our waitress she was giving us attitude/​asking like she didn’t want to be there. We were going to order some margaritas after we’d placed our food order, and waited for our waitress to come back by the table, or at least close enough for us to flag her down. She never came back. No one came by for 10 minutes, when they delivered our queso, so we decided to forget about the drinks.
I ordered enchiladas (one cheese and one beef) — that came with rice and beans. The rice was good, the beans were bland, and the 2 enchiladas tasted weird. The cheese tasted super cheap, it didn’t help the enchilada at all. The beef was the better of the 2 but still not very good (extra greasy). I was pretty dissatisfied with my meal, but I wasn’t going to mention that in front of my in-​laws since they were paying. No one else mentioned anything about their food, they seemed ok with everything.
I will go somewhere else for mexican food, or order something else the next time I have to go there. The overall experience was just not good, and it wasn’t my first visit — it used to be really good back in the day! Made me appreciate some of my current favorite mexican restaurants!