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    Pablo's Mexican Grill

    3.9 (82 reviews)
    InexpensiveMexican
    Closed 11:00 am - 9:00 pm

    Pablo's Mexican Grill Photos

    Business Info

    PABLO'S MEXICAN GRILL ATMOSPHERE

    What's the vibe?
    Moderate noise
    Casual
    Outdoor seating
    Good for kids

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    Recommended Reviews - Pablo's Mexican Grill

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    Burrito Bowl with Chicken
    Divya J.

    If you like your food to have any flavor, don't eat here. I never waste food, but ended up throwing most of my bowl away since it was inedible. All of the ingredients were devoid of any flavor and they charge you extra for sour cream and any more than one scoop of salsa.

    Salsa options
    Dawn M.

    Not an actual grill- fast food style walk up rail and order- but it's great flavor and great selection of salsas. 3 tacos for $8.95 with chips- good price as well.

    Patrick T.

    Oh, Pablo you know how to make me full! I have partaken in your delights a couple times now! That full size vegan burrito really hits the spot! I love how you make it right before my eyes, and I get to choose the amount of beans, veggies, rice, salsa's (spicy baby), guac, lettuce, etc I want on my over flowing burrito of goodness! I love how you put some very salty chips right next to that beautiful burrito and I love it how when ever I come here this is the only meal I need to eat that day! Oh Pablo thanks for making me full!

    Burritos are huge! Def bigger than pancheros
    Aaron P.

    This is a local burrito establishment that is similar to Pancheros. They are known for their fresh ingredients and huge burritos! They also make good quesadillas. The restaurant in itself is located downtown and can seat a fair amount of people. I like that they are open late at night, past midnight on the weekends. The food is very good, but I do not like that they do not have queso to put in burritos like Pancheros does. I like how they include chips with the meal. My friend and I go here a lot and he always bets me that he will reimburse me for my meal if I can eat the whole burrito in the time that we are there, because he eats fast. I have never been able to do it, so COME HUNGRY! They give you a lot of food. I will give it 4 out of 5, just because I don't like that they don't have queso.

    Order area
    Kayla B.

    The easiest way to explain Pablo's to non-locals is "A Chipotle's but local and less spicy". And that's pretty much Pablo's in a nutshell. They offer indoor and outdoor tables and chairs as well as a bar with barstools that goes around the perimeter of the bar. They don't offer any booths. They seem to try to recycle as much as possible, and garbage cans offer helpful reminders about what you should be recycling instead of tossing. Pros: -DELICIOUS food! I really love the taste of their tacos. The chicken tastes fresh and not-dry, the soft taco shells are slightly warmed and so light, and their veggies seem really fresh and good. The chips have been extra-amazing on some occasions (warm, super salty, and tasting fresh) and less amazing on other occasions (frigidly cold and taste stale and hard). -Good variety. Don't want a burrito? Get tacos instead. Or a quesadilla. Or a salad. Each will still come with complimentary chips, but you're not stuck in burrito-land if that isn't your thing. -Clearly a small business. A lot of the signage is home-made, but it explains things pretty clearly. -They don't spice up their meats. Chipotle and similar make-your-own-Mexican style restaurants will add spices and a bit of heat to their meats when preparing them. If you love that, it's awesome. If you don't, however, it can make most dishes unedible. Pablo's doesn't spice up their meats. If you want heat, choose their complimentary salsas. They even offer ghost pepper salsas. While it's not my thing, I was told that their salsas have a fantastic flavor and heat that makes it easy to forgive any sort of not-spicing the meat. -A good chunk of the flavor is really designed to come through in the salsas. They offer a TON of salsa options from mild to super-hot. Cons: -The wait here is real. Depending on what time you come, you may see a decent wait. I've been here four times at various times of the day (lunch, mid-afternoon, after-dinner, etc.), and each time, the wait varied between 5 minutes to 10 minutes. I'm not a speed demon, but considering very few restaurants in the area have long lines, it definitely is noticeable. It's possibly the fact that they have a "now hiring' sign in the door, but the line just drags on and on. It takes over 5 minutes to just get through two people's orders. -Charging extra for sour cream or certain veggies or guac. Even if you just want a little bit, the 60 cent charge still applies.

    Burrito with chips

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    Photo of Gene H.
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    2 years ago

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    6 months ago

    Love Pablo's! Especially the burrito bowls. Salsa is fresh and homemade. All in all a great experience.

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    7 months ago

    A Cedar Falls institution, the best salsas! Always fantastic, reasonably healthy and reasonably priced.

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    11 months ago

    I love their quesadillas! You can tell they use fresh ingredients The salsa is good too! Will you open a location in Cedar Rapids/Marion?

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    1 year ago

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    7 years ago

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    3 years ago

    Awesome filling burritos with great salsas. Can't recommend this one enough if you're in the area. Come hungry leave happy

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    2 years ago

    the service was, while not horrible, slightly rude. and the food was not that great. Pancheros is better.

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    Rancho Chico - Rancho Chico platter

    Rancho Chico

    3.8(32 reviews)
    3.5 mi
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    Very tasty! Would definitely go back again. We stopped by for a late lunch during Christmas week…read more The lunch rush was over, but they were still busy with holiday shoppers. To drink, my husband had a Modelo. I tried the strawberry margarita. It was a bit sweeter than I'm used to and may have preferred a salted rim to sugar, but it was good. After our meal I asked our server about one they call the Flu Shot and I think I'll try that one next time. The chips were fresh and crunchy. Great corn flavor. I wasn't a big fan of the salsa but my husband liked it. A self-appointed burrito connoisseur, my husband was delighted by the significant variety Rancho Chico has to choose from. He chose the Express Burrito with ground beef. When it was brought to the table, we were both amazed by the immense size. The plate on which it's served is large and, you can see in the photo, it went all the way to the edges. I tried the sauce and it was quite tasty. He enjoyed the whole thing - literally! I ordered the Mariachi Bowl with steak - a truly beautiful dish. The steak was impeccably seasoned and delicious. I tried to eat all of the components separately, but quickly found the best bite was created by stirring everything together. I couldn't eat it all and was quite happy to bring home leftovers. I love trying something new each time we visit a restaurant, but I'm not sure how I will avoid ordering this one again and again.

    For starters I am from Arizona.. so I'm a bit picky about Mexican food. I've seen this place all…read moreover my feed recently so I ordered a few things because I was really craving a specific kind of food and Rancho Chico did not disappoint. So the whole reason for the order carne fries w guac.. Oh My Goodness I ate almost the whole plate (ok more than shoveled into my mouth) before giving myself a stomachache..(WORTH IT). It had everything I wanted a little spice and some amazing queso. We also ordered pollo con queso (my spouse is basic but he said it was DELICIOUS). We got some carne asada street tacos and the churro cheesecake (we may have fought over this one! So good!). The carne asada was super tender and those salsas were so good!! I was not expecting the green to have as much of a kick as it did but it made me sweat a little, the red was fine but I don't normally go for that kind anyways my kid enjoyed it a lot.

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    Zury’s taco Bar - Camarones al ajillo

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    4.1(8 reviews)
    1.4 mi

    The service we received today at lunch, September 27, 2025 was so overwhelmingly incompetent and…read moreinept, you couldn't pay me or the other members of our party to ever consider coming back here. I can't comment in the food, because after how long we'd been waiting, and how many times our server messed things up, we had to leave to get back to our conference at UNI. We finally had to request to get our orders in to-go boxes, and when they arrived at the table, half of what we ordered was missing. What was in the to-go boxes was pretty much the ingredients just hastily thrown together. It took our server TWELVE MINUTES (!!!) to total up and prepare the bills for five small orders. It's the first time I left a restaurant on an empty stomach, and we had been there for an hour when we left. Our server and the manage repeatedly reminded us that it was only that servers third day on the job. That doesn't excuse taking twelve minutes to ring up orders, leaving half the items off our orders, and it getting to the point where a party is so frustrated that some opt to go hungry and leave rather than wasting even more time waiting around. The incompetence of our server was sobering, I'd rather have had someone cold and curt over someone who obviously could not handle the job. There were only seven other tables when we were there, how will she handle is when it's a packed restaurant on a game weekend?? I hope that if others experience this poor of an experience from this server, that management gets it that she's probably just not a good fit for working in a restaurant. Lastly, we were offered 10% discount cards for if we came back. That felt kind of insulting. After some of us not even getting our food, and the extraordinary, sustained dysfunction of our server, they should have at least offered a complimentary meal card.

    The mint mojito was perfect and the mole chicken delicious!! Service was great and the restaurant…read moretemperature was comfortable. I'm looking forward to trying the shrimp with avocado...

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    Pablo's Mexican Grill - mexican - Updated May 2026

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