I am dubious about any restaurant that serves buffet, but after hearing only good things from friends with high standards we tried this place for lunch. I was the only gringo there, which is always a good sign for authenticity. All the food appeared fresh, as they were clearly going through platters quickly.
The food was awesome! I don't think I've ever eaten everything off my plate at a buffet before; there's always one or two duds, but not this time. The enchiladas with both red and green sauce were my favorites. The ceviche was excellent too. They have horchata to drink, which I love, and a delicious marinated pork. I wasn't brave enough to do oysters on the half shell, but they did have them.
I waited to make sure my belly didn't pay the price for our visit before writing this review. All clear!
I stopped by here on my way to the airport. The food was decent, especially when you factor in its a buffet. I went with buffet without the seafood.
I had some food mole, enchiladas and tacos. Overall i think its decent food but I will continue to try other places.
Service was good as well. Although they gave me flour tortillas after i asked for corn tortillas
I've been here twice now, the first time being around 8 months ago. Â I just don't understand the over-the-top positive reviews. Â I went back, due to the insistence of a friend.
The place is pretty dirty and run down, particularly the bathrooms. Â The "authentic" Mexican beverages are watered down mixes dispensed from a soda fountain. Â Their idea of flan is white gelatin blocks floating in water. Â The other "stars" of the desserts area were overripe melon varieties and stale boxed cookies. Â The pork (I sampled 3 varieties) has a rancid taste and veins/arteries (maybe that's why I had digestive "issues" for the next several hours.
All of the hot food items on the buffet when I was there were held at about room temperature. Â They had some beef ribs that were OK. Â The enchiladas (2 varieties) had cooled to the point of being hard cheese in the middle and had little flavor. Â The rice was pretty good, actually. Â They also feature spaghetti floating in congealed margarine...yumm!
I guess the price is reasonable ($9.95 for regular buffet and $15.95 for a seafood buffet option.) Â The employees were pleasant and attentive; I'm just scared of the food and won't be back.
This place is disgusting. The tables were dirty.  No clean place to sit  The food was awful. Pork tasted like it was there for days or weeks. Salad bar looks like the salad that is pre made in the grocery store. Oysters were so ugly cooking. The ceviche looked dry.
In my opinion real Mexican tacos are made with tortillas not stale taco shells these place offers.
Never again will I Â eat here.
AWESOME!! By no means it's a touristy restaurant. This is a local joint. From my experience buffets serve low quality food that's definitely not the case here. My faves were Taco Jalisco, Chile Verde, Enchilada Green & Refried Beans. This place was phenomenal and authentic. It's not in the best neighborhood but by no means I felt unsafe. The staff & locals were respectful & friendly. Consider me a FAN!
Review Source:Oh man oh man! This place is ridiculous!
Price: $10 for an all-you-can-eat buffet, $15 for all-you-can-eat with the addition of shrimp, oysters on the half shell etc. Cheap!
The food: incredible! Enchiladas and tamales are outstanding. Barbacoa goat! Other kinds of goat! GOAT.
There are seriously like two dozen delicacies on display, and that's before you even get to the desserts (the flan and rice pudding are both out of this world).
I live something like 20 minutes away from here. I don't care, I'm coming back every other weekend anyway. This is the best Mexican food I've had in Denver and somehow, remarkably, it came from a buffet.
It has to be eaten to be believed.
This is an interesting, but very tasty, Mexican buffet. No matter what you are hungry for Guadalajara will likely have it. The day we went there were no less than 5 types of prepared shrimp available. If you are looking for soup, they have many selections including staples posole and menudo. Their green and red enchiladas were really good and I really enjoyed their chile-marinated pork.
If you are in the neighborhood, make sure you stop by here - don't let the word "buffet" keep you from trying Guadalajara!
I make a point not to review Mexican places because I fall into the category of people that 1.) feels most Mexican places taste about the same 2.) don't really delve into the much more "authentic" dishes to know what their supposed to taste like i.e. mole, menudo, etc.
With that said Guadalajara prepares their version of these more authentic dishes but also leave room for the Mexican food fans that don't stray to far from burritos and fajitas. From what my taste buds gathered, the food was pretty good, not great but good and of course you can eat as much as you'd like. Standouts for me were the barbacoa selections and the seemingly out of place, BBQ ribs.
The price is right too, and the people watching on Colfax is a great added feature.
Don't know that I want to ever eat this much Mexican food in one sitting but if your seriously jonesing, then this is the place for you.
I had read the wonderful reviews here on Yelp about the Guadalajara buffet and I had been meaning to check out the place for a few months. Â I wish I had come sooner! Â Why It took me so long to try a restaurant literally 15 minutes (walking!) from my front door, I will never know.
Finally last week after running some errands with my mother, I decided that we should stop and try out the food.
I sort of had to persuade her, as she didn't take time to 'dress up to go out' as it were, but I assured her that this place would be full of 'average joes' and that it was all about the food.
Turns out I was right, as I saw the gamut of Aurora residents all in their day to day attire. Â Did anyone have their "Sunday Best" on? Nope! Â I love an unpretentious environment and extremely good food!
The buffet smelled great and I had no idea where to start. Â Our server took me around their soup / sauce station (for lack of better term, many different dishes most of them soups or sauces) and pointed out what was spicy as I mentioned that I loved spicy. Â
I chose 2 of the soups after being informed they were both spicy. Â I am terrible with remembering names, but one was shrimp and the other was mixed shrimp and fish. Both had the hominy and a similar soup base and they were quite tasty. Â My mother tried some of each and agreed that the way the hominy was served in such soups put her Dad's version to shame. Â I remember a quote something like "If Dad used to make it this way, I would have loved eating it as a kid!"
I also made sure to try the green chile sauce that others have raved about and I was quite impressed. Â The flavor went well with all of the food I could load on my plate and I even had to go back for more. Â
The number of dishes they have is well over what any one person could hope to eat in a single sitting, but between the 2 of us, eating bites of each others dishes, we both tried a good chunk of it and everything was excellent!
In all, I think I tried 2 of the chicken preparations, the Pollo Adobado and another which was definitely flavored of chipotle and prepared as a BBQ style; I tried 2 different enchiladas, chile rellenos, tamales, the beans and rice with plenty of green chile on top, some of the chips and salas and more. Â I cannot even remember all the small bits and pieces but every single bite tasted of warm home made goodness. Â MMMmmmmm!
They had a few different salsas and I made sure to sample them with the apparently house-fried chips. Â The green tomatillo salsa was wonderful as was the dark brown one, again I forget its name. Â As far as I could tell, no pre-packaged bagged chips were in use, as they were all sorts of random sizes and tasted quite fresh. Â
The desserts were reasonable, although I do not entirely consider dessert at a buffet the main attraction. Â One reviewer mentioned Flan, while another mentioned an eggnog jello.. I am uncertain as to what it was, other than tasty. Â The rice pudding was decent as well.
We both left stuffed well beyond what our stomachs could reasonably handle and loved all of it!
I will definitely be coming back in the future and I hope my mother will also. Â While she enjoyed her meal immensely, she doesn't like going out nearly as much as I do.
Bottom line: If you want excellent Mexican food and have a big appetite, Guadalajara will fill you up and you will love every last bite!
I walked into Guadalajara on Monday night with high expectations. Â Well... to be honest, high expectations for a buffet mean very little in the long run. Â The 'best' Mexican buffet in my memory is that of my childhood trips to the long-departed Pancho's in Lakewood. Â
My only disappointment of the night is that the restaurant was not much more busy than it was. Â When we first went up to the buffet there were a number of dishes that were either out or on their last leg. Â However, very quickly the kitchen replaced all of those with piping hot, and absolutely delicious, food. Â I made a valiant effort to try everything, but there was just so much delicious food that I cannot in good conscience say I did justice to all of it. Â With so many tasty options from which to choose I cannot say that I decided on a favourite (perhaps I can do so on one of the many future trips which I have planned). Â
I was not terribly taken with the dessert options, they seemed little different in kind or quality from what you would find at any generic buffet. Â However, I can't hold that against them, because I would gladly skip dessert for one extra spoonful of posole.
I'm surprised no one has reviewed this place yet, so I'm going to be the change I want to see in the world and get it started.
OK, yes, this is a buffet. Many will let this term alone deter them from checking this place out. Perhaps they are *slightly* justified as 'buffet' and 'quality' are two notions that don't overlap that often in reality. But in this case, I would recommend making an exception and giving Guadalajara a chance. The food is surprisingly good for a buffet and some of it is really outstanding - I think their meats are their strong point.
Single best item? Actually, I really think it's their green chile. I consider myself an outright chile snob and try it pretty much everywhere I go. So far, my top spot has belonged to El Taco de Mexico (though it's a little thinner than I prefer). But I think it has been beaten, by chile on a buffet no less. Guadalajara just does it right - perfect heat, tons of pork, right consistency, garlic you can actually taste... man it's good.
The selection has varied dramatically each time I've been, so I'm not sure what their standard items are. They had some incredible crispy pork ribs one day, their barbacoa is really good (I'm not even a big beef person), and they have some very decent pozole and crispy tacos (tacos Jaliscos I think they're called).
The only item that has been consistently disappointing are the tamales. This is a shame, because tamales can be SO good. But theirs tend to be quite dry and crumbly in texture (not enough lard?) and they use chicken, which is fine I guess, but I really prefer my tamales with pork. Oh, also, the flan could definitely use some improvement.
I wanted to provide some negatives for a balanced review, but they are honestly not big deals. There's so much to try there and the overwhelming majority of it is quite good stuff. For $10 (or like $14 on weekends), it's a great way to try a lot of different stuff.
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