I stopped by here this last Thursday evening with my fiance and another couple for dinner. We arrived shortly after 7 PM to a completely packed restaurant with no tables available. Thankfully our friends were already there and had grabbed the last table for all of us. La Palapa isn't a terribly large place and I would guess that it can seat about 30 people or so in the dining room. This means that it can get very loud in there especially whenever there are larger groups at some of the tables as there was on this Thursday. It is decorated with photos on the walls from what I imagine to be Mexico.
Our group decided to start off the night by splitting both the chips and queso as well as the chips and guacamole for our appetizers. The chips seemed to be freshly made but were pretty oily and seemed to lack some seasoning. They were crunchy though and tasted good in both of the dips, each of which was creamy and delicious in its own way. For my entree I decided on the enchiladas nortenas which consisted of 3 chicken enchiladas in a red sauce, a 6 oz steak and then the rice and pinto beans that comes with each entree. I also ended up ordering a barbacoa quesadilla as a side dish to my meal. All of the parts of my entree were decent with my favorite parts being the steak and the quesadilla. While the steak seemed to have only been cooked on one side (pink until half on one side, well done on the other), it was thin enough that it still tasted good and I liked that it seemed to have the texture of the skirt steak. What I liked about the quesadilla was the perfectly crispy shell and the flavor of the meat. At $3.50, this may have been the best value of the evening for me. Last but not least, even though we were all stuffed from having eaten our meals, our table decided to finish our meal by splitting a sopapilla. While it wasn't like the sopapillas that I have had in Arizona, it was still good and seemed like a mash-up of churros and strawberry ice cream done right.
The bottom line for me is that I would head back here again in the future. This place is BYOB, reasonable priced and has some good food, so why not?