Costa Arena Mexican - Beach Park

Tried this place out tonight because my husband has fallen in love with birrias! The birrias were a disappointment because they did not dip the tortillas in the consommé and fry them, just a plain tortilla‍. The biggest turn off for me was the guacamole! While by anyones standards the small order would be at least a large anywhere else it was totally wasted on me by the over abundance of cilantro used, completely overpowering the taste. The chicken flautas were great, you could tell the chicken was fresh, it was moist and tasty and the flautas were cooked perfectly! You get a lot of bang for your buck here at Costa Arena ! We'll try again in the future to see how things are coming together! Ps, the salsas , green and red, were Yummy!

I moved to Skokie from Chicago 8 years ago and was never satisfied with the Mexican food in the area. This place fits the bill. Yesterday I got a carne asada burrito and a shrimp taco. Both hit the spot. I'm back again today and got a taco dinner, one fish, one shrimp and one steak. We also ordered nachos as an appetizer. All was very good. Only thing I wasn't crazy about was the rice. It was a little bland but that barely registers. It's a small place with four booths and a table. Looks cool in here. Nice family owns it. This location had another Mexican restaurant before with different owners and the food wasn't very good so don't get it twisted. I can see this place being my go to spot for a long time hopefully.

Wide selection on the menu and fantastic food. The steak nachos were definitely the best I've ever had.

Decent food and nice ambiance As a native of Southern California I know authentic Mexican food Food here doesn't quite measure up

My husband and I decided to try this restaurant since we 've never been. We went at lunchtime and there were 2 other tables. The lady at the front (who ended up being our server-Norma), told us to sit wherever we wanted to. She came over fairly quickly and took our drink order. When she brought the drinks, she continued to stand there ready to take our order. I said that we had never been there and needed time. She continued to stand there pen in hand. I looked at my husband and said Well this is awkward . So when we figured out what we wanted, we ordered a fajita and tacos el pastor. The good- 1-The place was clean. 2-Hand sanitizer bottles at most tables 3-Salsa was good 4-The pastor tacos were decent The bad- 1-Even though Norma was all in our faces when we were trying to figure out what to order, she became too busy talking on the phone (ear piece) to pay attention anymore. Whenever we needed her we had to walk up and get her. 2-She brought chips and salsa and the salsas were in these little plastic souffle cups for to go sauces. You couldn 't get a chip in them unless you broke the chips in small pieces, which we did. It was weird and awkward and frankly quite annoying. 3- The fajitas-though the picture looks good- had almost NO FLAVOR. The beans were bland like they didn 't even put salt in them and the rice was flavorless as well. The pastor tacos were decent but with everything else- definitely not worth another try. 5-The garnish of cucumbers were bad (see pic). Those should have been in the garbage and not on my plate. 6- I was excited to try their fried ice cream! It was $4.99 and was a small scoop of ice cream- NO sauce NO whip cream- nothing. We had to hunt her down again to ask for sauce. She brought us chocolate sauce that was either old or the cheapest Dollar Store syrup as it tasted terrible. My d butt poured it over the ice cream assuming it was fine and ruined my little baby scoop of ice cream. FAIL 7- We asked for a togo container and we opened it up to find it dirty and used. We asked for another and she didn 't even apologize. 8- OF COURSE, when we wanted to leave, we brought the bill to the register and she was STILL talking on the phone and didn 't even stop to ask us how our meal was, thank us or even utter a word. Just rude. 9-This is a preference but I look forward to fountain soda at a restaurant and they serve cans. How can you have a bar and restaurant and not have fountain soda?? It definitely isn 't worth going back to give them another try. Too many things to fix and service was terrible. The only reason they got a 2 instead of 1 was because there were things that were positive-but not that many-and I 'm probably being generous.