Castillo’s Mexican Restaurant is in the historic downtown of Mariposa, CA.  It opened in 1955 and serves traditional Mexican fare with tons of combination plates.  There are a few outdoor tables as well as ones in the small place with a few dedicated parking spots and otherwise street parking.  It serves cocktails, beer and wine for lunch and dinner.  Service was quick, friendly even offering to bring more chips and salsa.   The walls were filled with decorations with even more added for Halloween.  Some of the good sized wood tables were painted with colorful illustrations and windows were open to the street.  It was a pleasant place to sit and the food was pretty good.  So if you’re in the area stop by for a Mexican fix and then hit the California State Mineral Museum before going to Yosemite.

Set-up

Food

Chips and salsa come with the plates.  They were a fairly thin crispy chips but without a lot of corn flavor.  They were lightly salted.  The salsa was a fresh one with sliced tomatoes, peppers and cilantro.  It was really good even though it had a lot of liquid that was hard to dip, the flavor was very nicely balanced and fresh.

The #4 Fiesta Combination plate came with a taco, enchilada and chile relleno.   You get your choice of fillings and we both went with the server’s recommendation of pork in the enchilada with a chili verde sauce and shredded beef in the taco (the combination of which added $1.50 to the plate).  The plate comes with rice and beans.  The taco shell was not the crispiest but the filling was good but too well packed to pick up and bite.  The chile relleno was stuffed with and covered with cheese and a ‘chile relleno’ sauce.  The sauce reminded me of a meatless chile sauce and it was really tasty on the unbreaded poblano.  The enchilada was tender and tasty also.  The beans were fine as was the rice.  It was a good plate, especially if you added a bit of the fun salsa to the taco.