El Molino Takeaway. El Molino delivers memorable meals with Yucatan Mexican food, but at a price much higher than your typical Mexican joint. While you'll recognize the form, the food here has a different set of spices and ingredients. Overall, I would give the food an 8.1/10 on taste, but 7/10 on value.
I really enjoyed the layers of flavors, particularly in any dish featuring tomatoes and pork belly. But the price taints the memory of the food.
Note also the restaurant's menu structure, which feels like a hybrid of prix-fixe and à la carte dining. The plates are exceptionally small, forcing you to order multiple items per person to assemble what feels like a complete meal. That, unfortunately, transforms a delicious dinner into a surprisingly expensive affair, especially for the Mexican food category.
With that in mind, El Molino is a fantastic destination for an upscale date night or a special occasion when you want to try something different. The food is great, but the price-to-portion ratio makes it difficult to recommend for casual or regular dining.
El Molino Experience Summary
We headed to El Molino for a friend's birthday party. I had read good things that day about it, so I was pretty pumped for the date night type feast.
Things got a little weird at first. The server provided an un-needly lengthy menu explanation to the restaurant's unique and costly structure. She carefully outlined that the plates were designed for tasting and that we should each plan to order an entree plus at least one or two tacos.
Because I'm a second-tier friend, I got outvoted on everyone ordering their own, so the table ordered family-style. We ended up with eight or so different items to share and sample. The food came out super fast for all that we ordered.
Everything tasted great, but we'd been warned the portions were small, and they definitely were. With eight of us sharing, I only got a small bite of each dish. The real shock was the bill. For just my wife and me (including one drink each), our share came to $86.
That was for what essentially came out to three tacos worth of food.
It was easily the most expensive Mexican meal I've ever had. I was disappointed that I'd spent so much money and was still hungry, but the food I did eat was excellent.
The Food At El Molino
We tried a mix of meat, seafood, and vegetable dishes.
The standout dish for me was the Sope De Tomate. The ratio of cheese to veggies to sauce was spot on. It had a creaminess to it, but the tomato sauce just made it dreamy.
The battered shrimp were very good, mainly because of the incredible sauces they came with. They're clearly skilled with sauces, because the free table salsa was fantastic, too. It was a unique, creamy salsa with some kind of cheese in it.
The salsa was served with amazing house-made tortilla chips. They were dark corn, super crunchy, and not greasy at all. They were some of the best free chips I've ever had.
The pork belly taco was easily my single favorite. It had a smoky, melt-in-your-mouth bit of pork belly with their signature high-quality sauces.
Just, like everything else, I wish it were bigger.
As a rule of thumb, anything with tomato in it tastes 9.0+ / 10 at El Molino.
Not everything was a hit, though. The turkey tacos were filled with turkey and toppings and tasted good, but turkey will never be as flavorful as pork or beef.
This highlighted the biggest issue of the night: nothing on the menu is a full meal. You have to order a lot of food, which is why it gets so expensive so fast.
On the drink menu, a friend tried a Mexican version of a Bloody Mary and said it was one of the best he's ever had.
For dessert, our table shared the flan. It was fine, smooth and custardy, but it wasn't memorable like some of the other dishes
El Molino Atmosphere And Miscellaneous
When we visited around 7:30 PM on a Thursday, the restaurant was surprisingly quiet, with only four or five other groups dining.
I enjoyed the simple but festive decorations. The highlight for me being, what I think is, a real corn mill in the center of the restaurant.
Everything was painted orange, which comes through in the pictures, as does the general low lighting. Though it also felt a bit empty as we were basically the only ones there.
The service was great. She was on the ball with a menu explainer, drinks, and new rounds of free chips. Although we really didn't need the 10-minute menu disserataition at the beginning.
Parking At El Molino
Parking was easy on the street right outside the restaurant.
El Molino Receipt
