La Catrina, a cheap-eat homemade mexican restaurant in Paris

Hi guys! Second review of the blog and this time it’s a mexican restaurant! I absolutely love mexican food and it’s one of the easiest cuisines to have vegetarian options (when in doubt, always go for quesadillas).

We discovered this restaurant a long time ago when we were students and wanted some cheap-eat and quick place to eat during finals. We were surprised by the quality of the food and how tasty it all was, so it quickly became one of my favorite places to eat for around 10€ in Paris. La Catrina is located in the 13th arrondissement in Paris, right next to the L6 stop “Nationale” (Exact address : 136 Boulevard Vincent Auriol, 75013 Paris). The restaurant is quite small, so make sure you either come at opening time or a bit later (around 1:30PM or later) to find a table. You can always call in advance and see if there’s a lot of waiting time.

The food

The menu of this restaurant is divided in starters that you can easily share (Such as Nachos, Guacamole, …). They cost around 6€ most of them. Then, for the main course, there are: burritos (around 10€), tacos (Around 3€) and some other mexican dishes such as tamales or quesadillas. They have some lunch combos with the tacos (3 tacos and a drink), but we never take that because we aren’t big drinkers of sodas, so we always go for water and that wouldn’t be worth it.

So, what did we have?

I was extremely hungry on that day because we were eating later than usual and so I was logically starving. I had nachos as a starter and yes, I said that starters are usually to share but in this case my boyfriend was not feeling the nachos party, so I just had the entire nachos tray for myself. The nachos tray had cheese, beans, jalapeños, tomatos and onion. Such a comfort food thing to eat and also very well executed.

My boyfriend ordered a burrito and a taco (he was also starving), his options weren’t veggie friendly so I did not bother taking a close-up picture of it. I had two tacos (they have 2 vegetarian tacos available).

On the left: my rajas taco (green bell pepper, poblano smoked pepper, brebis cheese and cream). On the right: mushroom taco (mushrooms (duh), onion, and red bell pepper).

Every time I come I always say to myself “I should always take two rajas tacos instead of the mushroom one”, but then when I’m there I can’t help myself. The mushroom is good, but it lacks a bit of punch in my opinion (even though I always add a lot of spicy sauce). It becomes a big soggy by the end and I don’t like soggy tacos. The rajas one is much more original, it smells like home and the cream and cheese add a different touch to it.

Price

We paid a total of 24€ for this meal. Really cheap for everything we got.

Just a heads up: Their credit card machine rarely works, so make sure you bring cash !

Overall

The service is really welcoming and fast. We wanted to take it easy because we had a movie after the lunch, but since the place is a bit small we did not want to take too much space either. The restaurant has a lot of spicy sauces to choose from (Forgot to take a pic!) and adding one of these sauces to your meal elevates it so much.

This place is a great one if you want good, cheap and spicy food!