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| - El Carnicero is the perfect example of when a restaurant has a cult of personality - this joint gets mad hype but only because it's trendy and different,and the hipsters love it - in my opinion. On the surface, this place seems awesome - lucha libre theme, 'authentically' billed Mexican food (ie, no quesodillas, chalupas, etc.) and great trendy branding.
However, after a dinner here it becomes clear that it's all hype and people buying into it. My fiancee and friends and I were really excited to go here. The menu includes many meal items that I haven't found outside of Arizona and I was stoked. Though, the meals that each of us got was extremely disappointed. Our friends asked the waitress how big the taco meal was and she said it was big enough to share, which they decided to do. Though, when it was delivered, there were a measly number of very small tortillas and barely enough 'components' to mix into it for one person, let alone two - spoiler alert, they left hungry. Our friend even asked 'wait, is this it?' when their meal arrived...
My fiancee and I each got meals for ourselves, which, again, weren't enough for one person to be satisfied. Beyond that, however, the meals hid 'flavor' for heat and were excessive in spice (again, I lived off authentic Mexican food in AZ and love some good spice and heat, not an excessive amount of spices and heat masquerading as 'flavor').
The guac, however was spectacular - highly recommend the smoked salmon and other guacs...if all you go here for is that and beer.
Overall, extremely over-rated and over-hyped place that isn't worth anything close to the price. Filiberto's side street fast-Mexican food in the Southwest does a better job than this place. As an end-kicker for how bad and disappointing our experience was here - the four of us ended up going to another restaurant nearby afterwords. Cleveland is home to alot of amazing Mex/TexMex joints - so skip the hipster joint El Carnicero and check out another place.
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