Toren's Resto Rants: Sal y Limon

A sauce for each life of your gato

Sal Y Limon

Their blurb: Sal y Limon is a gathering place for sharing food and ideas in an organic way that is significant. Yes, it’s casual dining but we feel the experience should be fun and inspiring..

MENU

Address: 701 Kingsway Street #5, Vancouver, BC
Open 11:30am – 9pm
Booths? Half-booth along some walls.
When I dined: 3pm on a Tuesday
Noisy? Not really
Candies with your bill? No
Lives up to it’s name? There was salt on the table. I didn’t see any limes. Where are they?

Mexican food! This is the kind of place where you order at the counter and they give you a number on a tiny flagpole, then you find a table for yourself. In fact most of the restaurant is self serve with sauces, cutlery, water, etc. They have a Taco Wars best taco award on the front counter.

I ordered four tacos – beef tongue, slow roast chicken, slow roast lamb and pulled pork. Cheese on your tacos is extra (to the tune of 25-40 cents) and I decided to opt out. Next time I’ll add the cheese. How long should it take to prepare 4 tacos? It wasn’t busy when I visited but it still took 15 minutes. That seems like 5 minutes too long.

Horchata is available and it comes in different varieties, including rum-chata! I had the coconut horchata and it was very nice, if a bit small.

The size of the restaurant is decent. The tables are small…and too close together in places. The ambience was fine. The music was mostly but not exclusively Mexican and it was at a reasonable volume. For some reason they had baseball on the TV above the counter. The decor is a lot of Day of the Dead paintings and wooden folk art. There is a children play area/stage but luckily there were no kids while I was eating, since the table I chose was directly adjacent.

Most of my tacos were delicious, but I would skip the beef tongue. I will definitely go back and try some more selections from the menu. And this time I’ll find those pesky limes!

toastBiggest Rave: I got 10 cents off because the clerk didn’t have change. Woohoo! At first I didn’t see the selection of sauces at the back. It’s not a bad place for them (clears up the front area) but I wish someone had pointed them out to me, as I had to search. There were nine sauces and all the ones I tried were delicious.

Biggest Rant: The lineup to order is super awkward. As soon as you enter the restaurant there’s a little cubby hole to the right where they’ve cordoned off a line, but as soon as you get through the door you’re already blocking the line. The first time I came in, I saw the queue and got in it, and I was the only one. Before I was even acknowledged by the staff, a pack of four crowded in right behind me and I immediately felt like I was at an Iggy Pop concert (note: I’ve never been to an Iggy Pop concert). I browsed the menu but it wasn’t an enjoyable feeling and I fled the scene, coming in a couple weeks later to try again.