El Santo: Contemporary Mexican restaurant in New Westminster
El Santo is a Mexican restaurant located in downtown New Westminster. They offer modern Mexican eats with cocktails and a trendy atmosphere. I came here with 3 friends for a late dinner service on a Tuesday night.
Interior
The interior is modern and contemporary. Lighting is a little dark, but overall a very cool and jazzy vibe. Really liked the light installations and the cute yellow booth seating – makes for cute Instagram photos!
They also have a full bar and a private dining space in the back if you want to have a bigger group or if you are celebrating something.
Food
I mostly shared everything with one other person and split the guac & chips between 4 people.
Guacamole trio ($16)
We order the guacamole trio to share (they also have a salsa trio option as well). It comes with 3 different guacs – tomatillo & citrus, mango and chicharrón – and house made tortilla chips.
Out of the 3 guacs, I liked the mango one the most. The one I liked the least was the tomatillo & citrus, I thought it tasted a little strange and could have totally done without it.
The house made tortilla chips were fantastic and the servers were really attentive in refilling our tortilla chips whenever they saw the bowl empty. They refilled it at least twice for us during our dinner seating without us having to ask and we were very happy. It felt like we had bottomless tortilla chips.
El Santo huevo ($9)
I am not sure if this is still on their menu, but I thought this appetizer was very interesting. It is essentially a scotch egg with their own twist. It’s a masa battered soft boiled egg with house made chorizo, served with habanero apple jam.
This was really tasty! I liked the soft egg on the inside with a crunchy fried exterior and the savory taste of the chorizo sausage in between. The habanero apple jam was also a very unique touch and added a bit of a kick to this simple dish.
Al pastor taco ($14)
We order 3 different tacos and we try this one first. Each order of tacos comes with 2.
The al pastor taco has charcoal grilled pork, onion, cilantro, grilled pineapple and salsa roja in a cute little cup. I really liked this taco because I liked the fruitiness the grilled pineapple adds to the smoky pork meat.
Barbacoa taco ($14)
The second taco we have is the barbacoa, which features braised beef cheeks, marinated chilis and salsa roja. This one is more similar to a lot of tacos we’ve had that have some sort of pulled pork or marinated beef meat. It is a little more “wet” than the al pastor taco, but it had a lot of flavour to it.
Pescado taco ($14)
Lastly, we try the fish taco, which is usually our go-to whenever we try a new taco place. The pescado taco uses beer-battered BC ling cod, avocado lime crema, shredded cabbage, tomato, scallion and salsa verde.
The deep fried cod is crispy and fried really well, the fish meet inside is tender and soft. Really liked the avocado lime crema as it is more unique than your average mayo or tartar sauce pairing.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
We were pleasantly surprised with our dinner at El Santo. Since we didn’t make reservations, we were just a walk-in and was hoping for a nice late-night dinner. Everything tasted really great and upscale, more fancy than your local taco shop stand and the service was excellent.
I would definitely order a trio again, whether it be the guac or the salsa or they even have the queso one, which is a cheese dipping. I wish they had some sort of trio that was guac and salsa and queso, because that would be a no brainer and a fun way to share an appetizer with the table.
Again, not sure if that egg appetizer is still on the menu because as I write this review, I don’t see it on their website anymore but I do hope they bring it back because I would order it again even though it’s $9 for 1 egg lol.
Out of all the tacos, I actually liked the al pastor one the most. Usually the fish taco reigns #1 for me, but I thought the pork one was a bit more unique. All the tacos were actually huge so the $14 price tag is actually pretty reasonable. I think 2 tacos for me would have been enough but we ordered 3 so I was really full lol.
They also have dinner entrees, which we didn’t choose because we just wanted a quick casual bite and tacos seemed the way to go. But since their menu and food is more upscale and modern, I am inclined to order some fancier dishes the next time I go. I can see El Santo being a good choice for a cute date night or a night out with some friends.
Sincerely, Loewe