Comal - Berkeley

The experience was very pleasant. The food was excellent, though a bit on the spicy side. Overall an excellent place.

My husband and I visited Comal restaurant recently and, unfortunately, our experience was underwhelming. While the restaurant boasts a beautiful ambiance and the guacamole, salsas and margaritas were delicious, the main course was a major disappointment. We ordered the rib eye, which was not only overpriced but lacked the flavor I remembered from previous visits. The steak seemed far from a true rib eye and was extremely tough to chew, the piece would not break with me chewing it so I had to remove it from my mouth in fear of choking with it so much so that we ended up bringing the food home uneaten. Additionally, we were surprised to find a 20% tip added to the bill without prior notice. While the service was excellent, I felt that the overall experience did not justify the expense. We left feeling that our money could have been better spent at a local taqueria. We will definitely not be returning!

We had heard this Berkeley spot was awesome and had eaten at the taqueria called 'Coral Next Door '....and loved it, so we were excited to try it. Berkeley needs a spot like this in this location as we go to The Greek for concerts and Berkeley Rep for theater, AND the new ish UC Theater on University for concerts. The pickings are slim until now. We loved everything. The quiet attentive service, the amazing food and the cool space. Everything was great.... I love that they just bring these tasteful carafes of still and sparkling water and the chips at both places are almost like pastry. They give you three salsas and the green one in the middle is super hot but SUPER tasty. I could put it on my cereal in the morning. We had guacamole, sweet potato tacos and pork enchiladas....all perfect. Oh yeah, we had a hamachi crude to start that was great. Flan for dessert was the best flan I 've ever had. Not usually a flan fan but this one is worth writing home about. Can 't wait to go back.

Our server was lacking in personality and the amount of attention he paid us. The chips early girl tomato pico de gallo were fabulous. Good guacamole. We had our usual, the steak plato fuerte. The steak was delicious, but tough to chew which made it less than pleasant. This hasn't been our experience in the past. The accompanying beans, rice tortillas were great, as always. But the evening's side of an enormous mound of green beans w/pepitas something else was very uninteresting. We chose to sit outside in the covered area the noise level was deafening.

The service and ambience at Comal were great. Also, the chips and salsas (including guacamole) were first-rate. We also had enchiladas, tamales, grilled sweet corn, and saffron rice. All were OK, although the grilled corn was a bit soggy overcooked. Margarita and beer were just right. I would definitely go back to Comal the next time we are in Berkeley.