Los Ocampo in Merriam Park, St. Paul is definitely an acquired taste. Los Ocampo is a chain restaurant unique to Minnesota that opened a new location in November 2024 and serves a variety of Mexican dishes. Although this seems enticing, I was quite disappointed.

The environment in the store was nice. The servers there were friendly and respectful and had a good attitude when serving customers and assisting us. There were colorful paintings across different sections of the vibrant walls and when I walked in, I immediately was in a better mood.

I ordered three tacos: birria, barbacoa, and al-pastor chicken. Along with these, I ordered steak fajitas, churros, green and red salsas, and chips and salsa.

The chips and salsa were what anyone could expect a corn chip and salsa to taste like: nothing special, but a good introduction to what came next. I then moved on to the tacos. Each taco I ordered had two flour tortillas, which contained the protein of choice, and an excessive amount of onions, radishes, and cilantro. The birria taco was mediocre. The beef was average but still had a good flavor. The barbacoa taco was not good. The meat quality was poor and it was dry. Even when trying to change up the flavor when I added salsas, it did not change the lack of flavor and dryness of the barbacoa. Both of these beef tacos could have been much better had they been much more juicy and had some more spice to them. Finally, the al-pastor chicken tacos were by far the best. The chicken had the right amount of spice and salt and had an acidic tone that complimented the other flavors. When I added the red salsa to the taco, that was a game-changer.

Although the al-pastor chicken taco was my favorite, all three tacos could have been much better had the tortillas been fresher and had there been fewer amounts of toppings. Along with this, instead of having a double-wrapped tortilla, the ingredients could have been evenly distributed and made into six smaller tacos, instead of forcibly adding everything into a double-wrapped tortilla to hold everything together.

The steak fajitas were a different story. The fajitas had red and green bell peppers, charred pieces of steak, and sauteed onions. When wrapped in a larger flour tortilla and with their Spanish rice and some salsa, this was a flavor to remember. I shared the fajitas with my family and they were done in almost five minutes. We shared churros with each other and they were forgettable; the churros were very stale and hurt the mouth to eat.

Although there is room for improvement, the steak fajitas, and the chicken al-pastor taco were definitely above average and are things I would go back to Los Ocampo for. All of these dishes came out to 53 dollars, which may seem steep, but considering the amount of dishes I ordered, it was a reasonable price. If you are looking for a change in palette and a quick bite to fill you up, Los Ocampo is the place for you.