El Farolito - Review #3 (Mostly Photos)

El Farolito Jr. 1339 N East St Anaheim, CA 92805 (714) 533-6032 Listing on Yahoo! Local Listing on Ask.com's Citysearch No known official website

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I covered El Farolito Jr. before but my visit then was at night and my pictures were not up to the standard of quality I wanted them to be. Here's some photos from a recent daytime visit when I met up with my friends James and Lori, both of whom have been to both El Farolitos many times before.

(Click Here to read our complete El Farolito coverage.)

From about 6pm till closing (and they typically stay open until midnight) El Farolito Jr. does a taco night thing where you can load up on tacos for $1.50 each and then go and put whatever toppings you want to on them. I was told that sometimes they sell up to 2,000 tacos in a night. The following are some pictures of the taco stations that had just been prepped for hungry customers:

El Farolito - Review #2

Date of Visit: May 4, 2007

El Farolito Jr. 1339 N East St Anaheim, CA 92805 (714) 533-6032 Listing on Yahoo! Local Listing on Ask.com's Citysearch No known official website

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I don't get much mail. Actually, what I should say is that this site doesn't get as much e-mail as its traffic would suggest. So when I recently got two or three requests e-mailed to me to reassess El Farolito, and I didn't get any requests to reassess any other restaurant, then I took those requests seriously. One of those people who e-mailed me told me that there is even an El Farolito Jr. so I tried that one out just to mix things up a little, knowing that the menu was likely to be the same.

When I arrived at El Farolito Jr. in Anaheim my first thought was that it couldn't be any smaller than the original one in Placentia, and maybe it was even a little bigger. It looks a little like an old Western cowboy saloon from out front. And they score some extra points for their big sign that shows they are open to midnight. That's good for people like me who often eat dinner when most restaurants are closing for the night.

One of the other e-mails to me on this subject recommended that I try El Farolito's carnitas and to ask for them "crispy." I decided that I would stick with the recommendation so I didn't even need to look at the menu but I did anyways and found lots of other items to try on future visits. I must admit that the crispy carnitas were a taste treat, not too greasy and not too fatty, tender yet crunchy in just the right way. Beans and rice and salsa were all pretty standard.

My friend James ordered the chile relleno burrito and I told him that's what I had at El Farolito in Placentia a little over a year ago and he asked, "Is there a chile stem in it?" I had to tell him the story about how mine had three stems in it. He still ordered it anyways and didn't report finding any stems. His burrito is not pictured because my experience has shown me that all burritos look pretty much the same on the outside.

I can't even remember what I gave El Farolito a year ago. I guess I must've given it a three Speedy Gonzales rating because the e-mails complained that I had rated it to low. If I had had a half Speedy image back then I would've given it a three and half Speedy rating. Now after going to El Farolito Jr. and trying their crispy carnitas I'm moving them up to a 3¾ Speedy Gonzales rating:

El Farolito - Review #1

Date of Visit: January 31, 2006

201 S Bradford Ave
Placentia, CA 92870

Listing on Yahoo! Local

Official Site

Appetizer: Free chips and salsa (rather spicy hot salsa)
Beverage: Lemonade
Entree: Chile relleno burrito

El Farolito opened in 1974 and is in sleepy downtown Placentia. So sleepy you can walk around right in the middle of the main streets and have no fears for your safety. A customer's comments on their Yahoo! Local listing says that the building El Farolito is in used to be a house.
When I saw that they had a chile relleno burrito on their menu I had to try it. Then when it arrived I wondered if the stem would be removed from it so that nobody would accidentally eat it when it's even more hidden than normal because of being inside the tortilla wrapping. Well, and I don't know how this happened, but the stem hadn't been removed and there were two additional loose chili stems inside. I figured it must be a sign of good luck so I made a secret wish. The chile relleno burrito turned out to pretty much be a chile relleno inside a flour tortilla with some refried beans thrown in for good measure and ranchero sauce all over it so I had to eat it with a fork and knife.

The Chile relleno burrito is camera shy

My brother ordered a two enchilada plate but had them substitute a chile relleno for one of the enchiladas. My friend's mother ordered a chile relleno a la carte and said it was the best chile relleno she's ever had. None of the three people (my friend James, his wife and his kid) on the other side of the table ordered anything that had to do with chile rellenos.
Their menu didn't mention postres so we just went to Foster's Freeze afterwards.

Overall, El Farolito earns a three Speedy Gonzales rating:

UPDATE (February 13, 2009):

Here are some pictures taken three years after the initial review:

Menudo

Taco Platter

Big Burrito

Camarones Empanisado