This has happened before where I go a number of times to a restaurant and get a bunch of pictures and just as I'm getting ready to post about them I hear they have closed. Pablo's was an oddball concept that started in Hawaii and then opened up a restaurant in Tustin that they planned on calling Pablo McGinty's to show that it would be part Mexican and part Irish (interesting to me since I have lived in both Hawaii and Ireland). Then as they were building they decided to change the name to Pablo's Cantina. Then after they opened they changed the name to just Pablo's. I went several times and they were always making tweaks to their menu. At first they had meats available on the menu that you wouldn't expect from an ostensibly El Torito-like place, such as lengua and other "authentic" Mexican items, but my guess is the clientele didn't order this stuff so much and probably just ordered typical combo plates. I tend to eat at places when their crowd will be small so I don't know what their busy times were like but I did see enough people there to make me slightly surprised that they were closing. Maybe even trying to put your place at the Tustin District, with its poorly planned parking, was the death knell from the beginning. If anyone else has anything to say about Pablo's please leave a comment.
I ate there once and remembered how empty it was (on a Sunday or Saturday afternoon). I thought the food was good, the service good, but I had read and heard complaints. So I wasn't too surprised to hear it closed...
ReplyDeleteI would love to visit that place someday and have my own mexican food experience. I love it!
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