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Good Places to Eat In Los Banos Ca.

This section of the Our Los Banos website is dedicated to the discussion and review of the restaurants in town.

You will find an ever-growing list of Los Banos restaurant reviews in the box further down this page. You can skip down and find a place to get breakfast, lunch or dinner if you like.

Introduction:
When we first arrived in Los Banos, we asked a local business person if they could suggest any good restaurants in town. The flippant and cynical reply was: "There ARE no good restaurants in Los Banos".

After years of dining here, we can give a properly eloquent retort in one simple word: BULLPUCKY!

We have spent time really getting to know the food scene in Los Banos and can honestly report that that the businesspersons negative assessment of Los Banos dining was completely upside down... There absolutely ARE good if not great restaurants in Los Banos!

While you may not find dining in Los Banos that rises to the level of Paris France, if you are willing to give up the fancy tuxedo clad waiters and 100 dollar per plate meals, you certainly CAN find DARN good places to eat with excellent service here in town.

Our Los Banos Restaurant Reviews - A Work Forever In Progress:
We have not been able to review every restaurant in town... not yet anyway! This section of OurLosBanos.com will probably never be complete. As long as they keep putting in new places to eat we will have content to add to this portion of the website! You should return here often as we plan for constant addition and possibly even occasional revision.

Our intention is to make this part of the website as complete as possible. To that end we regularly review places to eat in Los Banos. If you have a favorite restaurant in Los Banos and would like to see it reviewed on OurLosBanos.com please feel free to contact us and ask! We will not tell you when we are doing the review if we decide to do so. Restaurant owners may request their establishments be reviewed but be aware that we always do reviews anonymously.

Los Banos Restaurant Reviews

We are proud to share our personal opinions of the following eating establishments and restaurants in Los Banos. Please feel free to add your own opinions in our Forums Section.

Please click on the links below to be taken to our detailed FULL LENGTH review of each restaurant.

Please read the important notes below this table!

Establishment	Brief Notes	Dining Style & Brief Overall Rating
Italian Food
M&M Itallian Restaurant	Outstanding Chicken Piccatta	Nicer Dine In
Mexican Food
Cecilia's	Uninspiring	Family Style Dine In
Cutija Taco Shop	Looks are deceiving. Shabby building with exceptional food!	Walk-up Take Out
El Rodeo Taqueria	Uninspiring	Family Style Dine In
El Grullense Jal	Open very late and decent Mexican food.	Family Dine In Counter Service
Españas	Simply the best place in town for special celebrations.	Fancy+ Dine In
Jesus Restaurant	Clean & Great Service	Family Style Dine In
Las Palmas	A nice discovery hidden in an unexpected part of town	Family Style Dine In
Oriental Food
China #1 Buffet	Our experience did not meet our expectations	- Family Style Dine In - Buffet
China Garden	We were impressed with the good prices.	Family Style Dine In
Ming's Chinese Restaurant	Great shrimp but little else to write home about	Family Style Dine-In
Teriyaki House	Food court style oriental food.	Family Dine In - Counter Service
American Fare
Country Waffles	Flat out excellent Blueberry Crepes	Family Style Dine In
Eddie's Famous Cafe	Excellent Chicken Fried Steak	Family Style Dine In
Hot City Barbeque	Great ribs but we opine that the price is way too high	+ Family Style Dine In
Hot Dog Heaven	Decent hot-dogs with special entertainment events	Family Dine In Counter Service
Lunch Counter and Soda Fountain at Los Banos Drugs	A wonderful trip back in time with local flair - fun & good	Lunch Counter Dine In
Ryan's Place	Typical Denny's type food but loved by local seniors	Diner Style Dine In
Misc. Types And Hybrid Restaurants
Olinda's	A Fantastic surprise. Very good food but few patrons	Fancy Dine In
Ozi Ozi Shawerma Mediterranean Cuisine	A great change of pace	Family Style Dine In
Wool Growers	Woolgrowers was disappointing for us. Loved by others and many locals	Family Style Dine-In Unique
Please note: Individual ratings are not comparative. That is to say a 5 star take out place is NOT comparable to a 5 star dining-in place. We rate on subjective opinion of what we expect for a restaurant of a particular type.
Possibly Moved Or No Longer In Business The following restaurants may have moved or are may no longer be in business. The listings are left here for interest/historical purposes..
Las Margarita's appears to be out of business	Decent but not spectacular family dining	Family Style Dine In
Chemas appears to be out of business	Uninspiring	Family Style Dine In
Seafood House appears to be out of business	Has potential but needs kinks worked out. esp. w/service	Family Style Dine In
Island Grinds Hawaiian BBQ appears to be out of business	Very good Mahi Mahi	Family Dine In Counter Service
The Grapevine appears to be out of business	Extremely good service and good food potential to rival Españas if decor was improved.	Nicer Dine In
Me-N-Eds Pizza & Pastaria (2) appears to be out of business	Surprisingly good choices and atmosphere	Nicer Dine In

We would like to stress that we are not professional reviewers, that we have had little or no training in the food arts, and that we are simply expressing our own personal views and opinions on particular visits that we made to the establishments under consideration.

Subjectivity. We make no pretense of the fact that we are not objective. As with art, food is a subjective experience subject to personal opinion and even whim. Some people love a particular artist's work while others can not stand what is put on canvas. Picasso comes to mind. Similarly people's appreciation for a particular chef's abilities are uniquely their own. While our tastes are very eclectic and we enjoy a tremendous variety of different types of food, we do not expect our readers will agree with all of our opinions and views. What we like you may detest and vise-versa.

We DO encourage our readers to try each of the places that we have reviewed and then you can discuss (politely and in a positive fashion) your experiences and opinion of our review in the Los Banos Forum section.

About the Raiting System

We rate restaurants using a star system that is not comparative between different types of restaurants. That is to say a walk-up counter place could earn 5 stars and a nicer fancy sit-down place could earn 4. This is because when considering our raitings we rate based on our expectations of a restaurant of that particular type. It is therefore much harder for a fancy place to obtain 5 stars then is is for a hole in the wall because the expectations go much higher as the level of expectation rises.

Why Local-Centric Reviews?
While we do frequently patronize the franchised fast food places and the chain restaurants in Los Banos, we generally tend not to review those here. Nearly everyone in the USA knows what national chain restaurants like McDonalds, KFC, Subway, A&W, Chilli's, Foster Freeze, Dairy Queen, Quiznos, Starbucks, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Mountain Mikes Pizza, Dominoes, Little Ceasars, Papa Murphys, Jack In The Box, Carl's Juniors, Panda Chinese Food, Denny's, and Taco Bell are like.

While Los Banos is fortunate to have all of the above places to choose from, the real magic of any town's restaurant scene is the mom and pop places. Most people have not had personal experience with most of the non-chain restaurants in our town. So it is these lesser-known places that we tend to focus our Los Banos restaurant reviews on. We truly hope that you will consider patronizing the smaller places reviewed here and enjoying something different than the usual "two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese..." places that taste the same here or in Detroit.

Why The Merced County Health Food Facility Inspections Site Link?
We strongly encourage our readers to make use of a truly wonderful online resource we discovered last year. Merced County has put together a very cool Food Facility Inspection website which discloses the results of the County Health Department's last few inspections of each restaurant. The results are sometimes quite fascinating and are always interesting. Beware however you may not want to eat at certain places once you read some of the more dramatic entries. Our Los Banos .com very much appreciates and supports the county of Merced putting these Department of Health food facility inspections online for the public to see.

Behind The Scenes -
How Los Banos Restaurant Reviews Are Conducted:
When the staff of Our LosBanos .com reviews a restaurant we do so in the way that we feel is the most likely to produce the most honest and correct review possible. We do our best to experience the restaurant we are reviewing in the same way as any other customer would. We want the food and service we obtain to mirror the experience of any other regular customer.

To that end we believe the key to a good honest review is total anonymity. We do NOT EVER disclose to a restaurant that they are being reviewed until the review is about to be published here. We endeavor refrain from doing anything that would 'tip our hand' that we are doing a review. We do not take notes or photographs at `the time of the review and we try our best to look like and behave like any other 'normal' customer.

As of yet (to the best of our knowledge) we have never 'blown our cover' and been 'caught in the act of reviewing' by anyone at any LosBanos restaurant. However, should we ever blow our cover we would simply terminate the review, finish our meal, insist on paying full price, and not review the restaurant until a later date on a subsequent anonymous visit.

Again, we NEVER EVER tell any person that the restaurant is being reviewed.

Here are some other things that characterize our review process:

• We always pay full price for our meals.
• We tip according to the level of service.
• We never leave cards or other identifying information at the time of the review.
• We neither want nor would we accept any special attention, discounts, freebies, or ANY other special consideration when doing our reviews.
• We never ask for, nor hint, nor expect, anything of any kind even AFTER a review.

The restaurant's first indication that they have been reviewed comes when the review is published here.

Restaurateurs Fraud Prevention

Restaurateurs please note: In order to minimize potential scams and abuse by people not connected with this website we want to categorically state that NO SPECIAL CONSIDERATION WILL EVER BE ASKED FOR BY US NOR WOULD AN OFFER FROM YOU BE ACCEPTED BY OUR STAFF.

Stated another way no legitimate reviewer from OurLosBanos.com will ever ask for nor accept any freebies or even discounts before during or after a review. While we appreciate your generosity we feel it is important that nobody makes any gains by pretending to be us especially at your expense. We also want our reviews to be unclouded and above any hint of unfairness or subjectivity.

Again, we neither want, nor would we accept, any special attention, discounts, freebies, or ANY other special consideration in conjunction with our review of your establishment.

If you are unsure if you are dealing with a member of our staff read the above and also know the following: (excerpted from our advertising page)

1) Our reviews are never published anywhere else.

2) We will never ask you to advertise with us in conjunction with a review. If after we do a review you approach us we will consider putting your ad on our site. But we will never approach a site that we have reviewed.

3) Local Restaurateurs who want advertising on this site are hereby advised that advertising with us will in NO WAY affect our reviews either positively or negatively. We can not be bought.

4) We NEVER accept advertising money in advance of actually posting your advertisement on the site. Payment for advertising on this site is collected only AFTER the graphics, button, and links appear on the Our Los Banos website. We do not collect money in advance ever.

5) Advertising checks are made out to our company never to an individual.

6) No exceptions! Anybody doing anything different than outlined above is not connected with Our Los Banos .Com and should be considered a liar and a fraud. If someone does claim to be from Our Los Banos .com and asks for ANYTHING from you having to do with a review, (with the exception of a copy of your menu) we suggest that you consider calling the Los Banos Police Department and report the fraud reviewer as they may well be attempting to scam you or steal from your establishment.