Beto's Grill - 5818 East Temple City Blvd Temple City 91780

Beto's is one of the Mexican restaurants that we visit on a semi-regular basis (every other month or so). It is located just south of Las Tunas Blvd on Temple City Blvd. 

On our last visit we noticed a sign for $1.00 tacos on Tuesdays and Thursdays and thought that would work perfectly for our next "cheap" lunch review.

We have always liked the food at Beto's.  It is tasty and reasonably priced, but the one area that is always  lacking is the service. There is usually only one waitress working at a time and that one person just can't keep up with all the orders: serving food, refills, etc..

Our visit today was about the same as our previous visits. We had our daughter with us, so it wasn't exactly a date, but it was good to relax and have some family time. The weather was nice and sunny so we decided to sit outside at one of the two tables on the sidewalk. We arrived at noon and there were only 3 other parties inside the restaurant.

Right after we sat down the server came and took our order. In the spirit of our low cost dining experience we decided to stick with the $1 tacos. Daniel ordered three tacos (pollo, asada and pastor) and an iced tea. I ordered two tacos (pollo and pastor) and a side of beans. We ordered Emma one pollo taco.  Neither of us were brave enough to try the lengua (tongue) tacos, but they are available for one dollar. The server didn't write down our order and seemed to get confused at exactly how many tacos we wanted.  We had to repeat our order a couple of times, which could easily have been remedied if she would have just written the order down.

I tried to go cheap and order water, but the tap water tasted horrible and I ended up ordering an iced tea as well. Both Daniel and I enjoyed our tea; it was brewed not a mix. Daniel is becoming a bit of an iced tea snob and tries to avoid the mixes.

Chips and salsa were promptly brought out. The chips were good, warm and not greasy. We really like the salsa at Beto's, it is tomato sauce with green onions, cilantro, and chiles. It has just the right amount of kick to it, but not enough to burn your tongue.

After the slight confusion over our order we only had to wait a few minutes before our tacos and beans were brought out. The tacos are served on Beto's house made corn tortillas with onions, cilantro, lime wedges, and  salsa verde.

The pastor (pork) taco was very good and Daniel liked this taco the best.  The meat is slow cooked in a red sauce with onions and is very flavorful.  Likewise the chicken tacos are also good. They appear to be slow cooked in a chili sauce and I like these the best.  The steak (asada) tacos were our least favorite.  While the meat had a nice flavor the steak was overcooked and dry.  The beans were pretty standard Mexican restaurant fair.  They tasted good and were great for dipping our chips in.

Pork, Chicken and Steak Taco

Unfortunately, after the food came out our server became non-existent.  We had to go inside twice to request refills and order another taco for our daughter.  *On a side note, our daughter liked her chicken taco so much she asked for another which is rare.*  That is one of the bad parts of sitting outside.  You run the risk of being forgotten and in this case it felt like we were.  We think we saw the owner inside checking on the regulars (or people he seemed to know) bringing them their food and refills but we didn't see him checking on the other patrons.  As we were getting ready to leave he did come outside, say hi, and ask how our meal was.

Much like our other experiences at Beto's Grill, we found the food to be good and the service to be okay.  The server looks like she could use some help.  By the time we left, the restaurant was almost full and they needed more people working the floor.  For the price we would come back; all three of us were able to eat for $15.30 and we definitely left with full bellies.

One more side note.  Last time we ate at Beto's Grill they were offering a lunch buffet for $8.95.  Neither of us are big fans of buffets; the price is usually high for mediocre food.  But at $8.95, that price is less then the majority of their combo plates and the food was both good and the selection plentiful.  Beto's has fish tacos available on Wednesdays for $1.75 so we think we might have to come back and try their seafood. We will keep going back to Beto's and we will also keep hoping for the service to improve.

Now Go Fill Those Bellies... 

Our First Venture - New Bamboo Garden 7248 N. Rosemead Blvd, San Gabriel CA

My husband Daniel and I recently sent our youngest child off to preschool so now we have six hours to ourselves every week. We thought it would be a good idea to set aside one afternoon as a date time. We really enjoy eating out, but we don't enjoy the high price tag so I started trying to find places with good inexpensive food. After poking around on Chowhound.com and Yelp.com I came up with a list of places in the San Gabriel Valley that we want to try out. We thought it would be fun to blog about it so some of our friends and family could try out these restaurants also. We are going to try to visit one new place a week and would ideally like to keep our bill at $10.00 for both of us with a maximum of $15.00. We will let you all know how we do in our search for the best cheap food.

New Bamboo Garden

The first restaurant we decided to try was New Bamboo Garden, a relatively new Chinese restaurant in the city of San Gabriel. We had read about their affordable lunch specials and wanted to try them out.

New Bamboo Garden

New Bamboo Garden is located in a small strip mall next door to a busy Trader Joe grocery store. The decor is nothing special: a fairly typical hole in the wall with cheap tables and chairs. The restaurant was very clean which I always take as a good sign. The combination lunch plates are served with soup (egg flower or hot & sour), fried or steamed rice, an egg roll, and fried wontons. Their were 22 lunch plates to choose from and they ranged in price from $4.75 to $5.75. We decided to order different items and compare.

I (Marisa) ordered the Three Ingredients Tastes ($5.75) which is a dish of shrimp, chicken and steak cooked in a stir fry sauce and mixed with vegetables. I had the egg flower soup for my starter. I was not impressed by the soup. It was bland and had a thick disturbing consistency (like jelly). There was tofu, cabbage and egg in the soup, but everything was under seasoned.

Egg Flower Soup

After trying the soup I was worried about the rest of the meal but I shouldn't have been. The egg rolls and fried wontons were both good. The eggroll was crispy but not greasy like they can easily become. They consisted mainly of carrots and cabbage. The wontons were typical, but since I am a sucker for anything fried I enjoyed them. The eggrolls and wontons were served with a dipping sauce of sweet and sour sauce and spicy mustard.

Egg rolls, wontons, dipping sauce

The service at the new bamboo garden was excellent, the server was at our table with water within minutes of us sitting down. The food came out quickly and steaming hot. Our water glasses were always full. When my main dish came out I was really happy with how much food I was served. I easily had enough for two meals. My dish had a lot of different components, shrimp, steak, chicken, broccoli, snap peas, mushrooms, and water chestnuts. The meat was good and not fatty at all. The vegetables were crisp and fresh and the stir fry sauce had a good flavor to it; a nice balance of sweet and salty. 

Three Ingredients Tastes (I spelled it how it appears on the menu)

I had the boba milk tea to drink and it was good; for 98 cents I enjoyed every sip. The steamed rice that came with my meal was unremarkable. It served as something to soak up sweet and sour sauce.

I (Daniel) ordered the Orange Flavored Chicken ($5.75) and opted for the hot & sour soup and fried rice.  Unlike Marisa, with her egg flower soup, I actually enjoyed the hot and sour soup.  The heat in it was very mild and it could have used more tang (sour) to it, but over all I enjoyed the flavor.  Like Marisa I enjoyed the egg rolls and wontons.

Hot & Sour Soup

As with Marisa's Three Ingredients Tastes, my serving of Orange Flavored Chicken could have served two people. The breading on Orange Chicken can often be used to hide fatty and poor quality chicken.  That wasn't the case at New Bamboo Garden.  The chicken was good and the sauce on it shockingly tasted like oranges instead of just a sweet sauce.  The broccoli was also surprisingly fresh and crisp.  The only complaint I had with the Orange Flavored Chicken was that while it was listed as spicy it was only mildly spicy.  That is good if you are appealing to the whole family. Not so good if you are a spice lover. I will let you come to your own conclusion on whether that is bad or good.

(Not so spicy) Orange Flavored Chicken

My final lunch item was the fried rice. For me this was the only disappointing aspect of New Bamboo Garden. There was nothing to it.  Basically it was bland rice with some fried egg in it.  No veggies, no meat, no flavor.  Considering how good the vegetables were in the entrees I was disappointed there was no veggies included in the rice.  Since the rice is just a compliment to the entree my disappointment was minimal, but save yourself the calories and get the steamed rice.    

All in all I thought my meal was extremely good for the price.  I was very pleased.

It seemed like the New Bamboo Garden had a thriving take out service; the phone rang constantly.  But there was only one other diner in the restaurant. To try and change this they offer a 20% discount if you dine in. If at all possible I would take advantage of this almost unheard of special. Our total bill before our discount was $14.90.  After the discount our bill came to $12.60.

Both Daniel and I enjoyed this dining experience and would recommend the New Bamboo Garden to others. I will end this blog post with the quote that was on the fortune cookie I received with my bill, "May the warm winds of heaven blow softly upon your sprint.". I think it meant to say "spirit", but I've been doing a lot of running lately so I will gladly accept the warm winds of heaven blowing upon my sprint.

Now Go Fill Those Bellies...