Victoria Cocina Mexicana

Mike Tully 5 months ago

It's hard to imagine a more daunting challenge than opening a new Mexican restaurant in Tucson, where we are already blessed with many world-class options. Victoria Cocina, a brand new establishment located on the SE corner of Oracle and Ina, belongs in the upper tier. It's that good. I'm a 5th generation native Tucsonan, so I know something about Mexican food. My family members and I have dined there five times already and every meal was excellent. I recommend the Chile en Nogada, Tacos de Pollo, and enchiladas verde. Others raved about the Pollo en Mole Negro. It's a lovely restaurant, well-managed, and engaging. Highly recommended.

Michael F. 4 months ago

I went out here with a friend and the food tasted amazing. I would say the dining experience felt quite gourmet. We really appreciated the vegetarian friendliness as the beans/rice didn’t have lard and chicken stock. We especially enjoyed the kahlua cheesecake which is all made in-house. Zulema was our waitress, and she was very accommodating and helpful. I didn’t order any, but my friend also noted that this restaurant has a great selection of tequila and rum, along with mixed drinks.

Damian H 2 months ago

Really, really bland. The menu has a statement about the chef and that he's been doing it for 24 years, but the menus were also so worn that it was hard to read the writing around the edges, so I guess the chef has lost his spark for creativity and renewing the menu. We ended up leaving most of the meal on the table. The interior is absolutely adorable, with the enormous pollo mural, and is the reason this is a 2 star review instead of a 1 star review. But looks only get you so far.... We arrive at 11:15 AM on a Friday for lunch. The waitress brings us the menu for breakfast, where we then ask for the lunch menu. No statement is made about the specials or anything; in hindsight, the waitress seemed pretty checked out, especially considering a waiter who appeared later to work other tables and was super engaging on presenting the specials available. I wish we had known about the fried squash blossoms, but alas, we were not informed. I order a house margarita, my wife orders the horchata. My house margarita was entirely fine, my wife's horchata was some of the best horchata either of us have had. We order the dragonfruit shrimp ceviche, which arrives promptly. It's unbelievably bland; there's nothing at all notable about it except the shrimp are whole, so you get a choice of either a shrimp OR fixin's on your tostada, not really both, and that they're neon purple. You put it in your mouth and you're just chewing a quantity of Food. Skip the ceviche. I order the machaca chimichanga, my wife orders the sweet potato flautas. Again, both are surprisingly bland. My machaca has hard bits of meat in it, like it was put on a flat top to warm up out of the fridge before being rolled, and left on the flat top too long, but yet somehow was cold relative to the fried tortilla. I expect machaca to be at least slightly spicy and in any case bold and savory; I've never had such bland machaca. My wife's sweet potato flautas were also surprisingly bland. I asked her if she wanted me to write anything further, and she said they were just so un-memorable. Here's how bland everything was: I've never gotten up to get salt from another table to put on my refried beans. As I write this review I was going to attempt to reference what the chimi and flautas came with, and they're not on the website menu? Did we order from the garbage side of the menu? Should we have been warned by the waitress (again, she didn't really seem interested in being there) that we were ordering the soft menu? To be honest, I'd probably just get rid of that side of the menu: Taco Bell has more flavor than the things we ordered from that side of the menu. As we stood up to leave, we noted that the Friday lunch clientele seemed to have a minimum age of 90 years old. While that's fine, and this is probably really exotic Mexican food to a Minnesotan, look elsewhere if you're looking for true good Mexican food and know what it is.

T Nguyen a month ago

Very good food with a new twist of Mexican cuisine, Chef is a graduate of CIA, come and taste it and you can conclude with your own judgements. Personally, I dont taste much of authentic Mexican flavors, but its good food. Server we had, explain everything very detail.

Jim Bergstrom 2 months ago

I will join the ranks of the reviewers ahead of me and say that Victoria, and especially its food, is easily in the top 10 of Tucson. And I mean the top 10 of all the restaurants in town. As others have noted all the various elements that make up the foundations of each dish have distinct flavors. Everything is superbly tasteful and urges the desire for more. I was invited to lunch here by my foodie friend, Rob E. Looking at the menu once I arrived I was not expecting so many choices for every person's diet. Amazing variety. I had chicken flautas that were addictively, perfectly tasty and were covered in a sauce and salad that had a taste and aroma that lingered well after each bite. My goodness........