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Name Of Establishment	Cecilia's
Address:	Review done at former location of 925 6th St., Los Banos, CA New Location NOT yet reviewed. New location is 455 H Street Los Banos Calif..
Phone Number:	209-827-9832
Website:	Unknown
Prices:	Low to Medium
Date Of Review:	July 29th, 2006
Check out the Official Merced County Health Inspection of this Restaurant - If that link isn't working try this link (note: these links are slow to load)
Our Overall Numeric Rating
Summation Opinion:

On July 29, 2006, we decided to give Cecilia's a try. What we hoped would be a nice dinner turned out to be a disappointment.

Cecilias is located in downtown Los Banos amongst a row of other shops that line 9th street. Inside there are booths, a counter area, a T.V. showing (at the time) a sports program and colorful paper decorations hang from the ceiling. There are historical type photographs hanging on the walls. It isn't a "fancy" restaurant, but it does appear friendly. It seems like a good place to take your family.

The service we received was pretty good. Our waitress was friendly and accommodating. She explained to us what specific items were on the menu and was prompt in getting us our sodas (which were HUGE) and a heaping pile of warm chips in a basket. Throughout our meal she was unobtrusive but available.

Cecilias has a variety of traditional Mexican foods and all are reasonably priced. There are also some interesting seafood choices (such as octopus).

I ended up choosing a taco plate (plates come with rice and beans), my husband chose a combo plate (enchilada and taco) and our daughter chose a plate of nachos. We asked for tortillas and butter on the side and these were provided without a fuss.

For all Cecelia's has going for it we were surprised at what happened next. The moment we started eating is the moment when we started being disappointed. Frankly, in our opinion, the food was totally uninspiring. The beans were runny, nearly a soup, the meat in my taco had an odd flavor and everyone at the table agreed that everything was way too HOT (spicy). We also did not enjoy like the flavor of the sauces on our items at all, nor did we enjoy the "runny" sour cream (which I understand is "traditional").

My husband DID note that he really liked the flavor of the chicken in his enchilada, but he could not really enjoy it due to the accompanying spiciness. We also both liked the rice, which was mild but flavorful and was cooked just right.

Overall though, we just didn't like our dinners. I packed mine up for the kids (kids and dogs are great for leftovers you don't want) and we ended up going through the McDonald's drive through.

So, while the atmosphere and service at Cecilia's is friendly and pleasant, we didn't like their food chiefly because of what we opine is a WAY overemphasis on spicy-hot ingredients. Had it not been for that the food would probably have been pretty good. Still, Cecelia's recipes might be something YOU would like and we encourage our readers to try the places we review and decide for themselves. (Then post about it!) However, we won't be visiting again real soon. There are so many other Mexican food choices in town that I think we'll be patronizing others that agree more with our milder taste.

Update 9-16-06: We have run into two people recently who said that it would be a good idea for us to give Cecelia's another try. One let us know that we missed their specialty that he calls a "killer burrito". Well we may just give Cecelia's another try sometime down the line.

Specific Opinions By Reviewer One
Overall Rating:
Food:	flavorful but WAY too spicy hot
Service:
Decor:
Price/Value:	prices are low but because we did not enjoy the food I felt a low marking was appropriate
Bathroom Cleanliness:
Romance Factor:
Family Friendliness:

Specific Opinions By Reviewer Two
Overall Rating:
Food:	They have good rice but I didn't care for much else.
Service:
Decor:
Price/Value:
Bathroom Cleanliness:		Not Observed
Romance Factor:
Family Friendliness:

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Reviews in this section are simply personal opinions. We are sharing these, our experiences and opinions as a means to further discussion in our Los Banos Forums section not to promote or discommend any particular business. In fact we absolutely encourage our readers to make a personal visit to each of the restaurants we review and form your own opinion which (if it is respectful and honest) you are encouraged to post on the Los Banos Bulletin Boards where you are also welcome to discus OUR reviews.

More About Our Los Banos Restaurant Reviews

In this section, the staff of Our Los Banos .com shares our personal opinions on the restaurants that we patronize in the City of Los Banos. 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. 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.

Merced County Health Food Facility Inspections Site

Finally, 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. We at Our Los Banos .com very much appreciate and support the county of Merced putting these Department of Health food facility inspections online for the public to see.

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