La Principal

Short rib Mole taco was A+, as is the shrimp cocktail. Coffee is great. Man!, I don't usually stumble into such great places, I have goto in Evanston now.

Wine, beer and spirits are exceptionally well picked for being actually limited. Old Rasputin on tap, seriously. (See photo)

I rarely post a review on on the first visit. But this place deserves the praise.

Enjoy.

Best tacos along the North Shore. And now tomales once a week... you can’t beat the craftsmanship of the menu or the pristine curation of the tequila and mezcal selection. This is a once or twice a week lunch spot for me. Everything La Principal puts out is fire. Tacos tacos tacos.

Great Tacos and margarita at this place. Sat outside at a picnic table but the staff was very friendly and efficient getting my food to me.

Everything was executed really well, especially considering the price. Generous meat helpings and complex flavors on the tacos, elotes were delicious. It feels refined and authentic at the same time. I'll be back.

Contemporary and street food is how this restaurant describes itself. Overpriced and tiny portions is more accurate. You can't say you offer "modern" Mexican food and street food in the same sentence. It's an oxymoron.

I have never been to an authentic Mexican restaurant that has bottled salsa instead of homemade salsa, even hole in the walls make their own. What made it worse was how dirty the bottles were and caked with grime around the rim.

The guacamole was mashed avocado with one piece of onion in entire portion, it tasted premade and it was accompanied by generic chips that tasted store bought. They do not even have carne asada tacos which is a staple dish in a taqueria. The torta was appropriately sized for a child.

The short rib in mole sauce was decent and the service was adequate.

Great servers and amazing a la carte mexican food menu. Their margaritas are some of the best I've had, and they also serve specialty beers from local breweries that no other restaurants in the area have! Great happy hour specials too.

The food was pretty solid; the pork torta was drenched in sauce for the most part which wasn't too bad, but it lacked flavor without it unfortunately. The short rib torta looked better, but all in all the meal wasn't too pricey and service was good.

Food was edible, yet as a Mexican you have a certain expectation when it comes to tacos specially carnitas and al pastor.Get some real salsas please. And the elote... don’t even get me started on that, big disappointment. I did like their vegan tacos such as the sweet potato one.
But the worst of all was the flan tasted nothing like flan more like a badly made cheesecake. Although we ate it. We don’t like wasting food so we ate it all. It was all edible.
It seemed overpriced, although is Evanston, evantonians seem to be willing to pay big $$ for anything.
The interesting part is that both my husband and I got diarrhea a few hours after eating there, and we hadn’t eaten anything else that could have potentially made us sick. So there is a 90% possibility that the food was bad.

I want to give them a second chance and see if their churros and atole are at least good. And don’t make you sick.

Delicious Mexican food for a completely reasonable price pairs well with a great happy hour here. The warm and comfortable atmosphere only make the experience even more enjoyable.

Nice ambience but beware - they charge for everything as the entire menu is ala carte . Instead of complimentary, the chips and salsa costs $4, which comes with a fair amount of chips but a small little cup of salsa. I asked the waiter if we could get more salsa, and was shocked to find out when getting the final bill that they charged, without telling us, $3 for the extra little shot glass of salsa. Their explanation was that it was homemade, but most privately owned Mexican restaurants in chicago make their own salsa. It's this type of pettiness that makes me reticent to return