lucha libre gourmet taco shop | mission hills / san diego, ca

I read about the Lucha Libre Gourmet Taco Shop awhile ago but we never went. It wasn’t until we saw the taco shop on the San Diego episode of Man v. Food that we decided we should go. Jake and I loved the idea of the Champion’s Booth and wanted to take our out-of-town friend, Chris, out for a real treat. Jake made a reservation for the Champion’s Booth and off we went to taste the glory that is Lucha Libre.

Lucha Libre Taco Shop is themed around Mexican Wrestling (if you couldn’t tell from the name). There are luchadores stuff all over the place – wrestling masks on the walls, painting of famous people in masks in the bathroom and other fun items. The place just has a really rockin’ vibe – and a line out the door to boot. You know it’s good when the line is always way out the door! Jake and I wanted to go visit before Chris got here but when we saw the line snaking around the building we figured we could wait.

When we arrived at Lucha Libre and told the folks at the register we had a registration, we noticed there was already someone in the Champion’s Booth. After a few minutes of waiting, we were told there was no record of our reservation and the people currently in the booth hadn’t gotten their food yet so no booth for us. They accommodated us though by still serving us and giving us the royal treatment. We were called “The #1 Contenders” and our server told us we should give the people in the booth angry stares. They didn’t have to serve us or accommodate us, they could have just said, “Oh well, try again next time.” But they were really cool about it and made our experience really awesome.

The first thing our server did was bring us some chips and one of every kind of salsa they have. Mind you, there’s a salsa bar there and we could have gotten these ourselves, but since we were the #1 Contenders, he brought them to us, explained all of the sauces and their heat factors to us. You can click the photo up there for a close up if the text is hard to read. I personally really like the Cilantro based sauce – it was creamy and fresh. I also like the peach salsa for it’s sweetness and the dragon sauce for a little heat. The dragon was the hottest and the Peach was the mildest. I didn’t think any of them were really spicy though.

One thing I spotted on the menu so long ago was the TJ Hot Dog ($1.50) which I knew I wanted to try. It’s a bacon wrapped hot dog with all the fixings – grilled peppers, onions, mustard, ketchup, and mayo. It was really tasty – I even didn’t mind the ketchup (probably because I couldn’t really taste it, the mustard smacked it down). It might seem like too much stuff, but the combination of it all is quite good. A nice starter!

I got the Surf n’ Turf Taco ($3.49) as my main taco item for dinner. When Adam from Man v. Food went here, he had the Surf n’ Turf Burrito – and I knew there was no way in hell I would be able to eat that much food. I settled for the smaller version of that. It’s got carne asada, grilled shrimp, sliced avocados and a special chipolte sauce all over it, on corn tortillas. Really, really tasty. I loved the shrimp on there – good sized pieces you could really taste. The carne asada was cooked well and seasoned well – a really excellent taco! The sauce isn’t too spicy or anything and gives the taco a unique flavor. I liked it better than regular old tomato salsa.

We also got a couple of orders of the Champion Fries ($6.99) – you can also get these as nachos instead. We got it with the Adobada – a marinated pork. Our server dude told us that the Adobada is one of his favorites and we trusted his good judgement – and how good it was! The pork was really tender and really flavorful – I haven’t had anything like this anywhere else – really excellent stuff! My only complaint was that the fries were kind of soggy and I don’t like soggy stuff, so I’d probably rather have this with chips instead of fries, but that’s just me. It came with a bunch of sour cream and a good amount of gucamole. Really fresh and delicious. Yum, yum, yum!

After we were done with our meal, our server asked us if we wanted to get photos taken in the Champion’s Booth and we of course said yes. He brought out a box and said, “You guys want to wear masks, too?” Uhhh, yeah, totally!

And thus ended an awesome meal at the really delicious Lucha Libre Gourmet Taco Shop. The end.

Lucha Libre Gourmet Taco Shop
1810 W Washington St
(between Andrews St & India St)
San Diego, CA 92103
(619) 296-8226

Hours:

Mon-Thu, Sun 11 am – 11 pm
Fri-Sat 11 am – 2:30 am