Bobby D.
Yelp
My Pahtner For Life and I celebrated our 28th Wedding Anniversary the other day, so of course we wanted to celebrate this blessed milestone by dining out. I chose De Cabeza El Unico because I had seen this restaurant reviewed by Rockstar Eater, who is a YouTube Food Critic. The food that was featured looked appealing and caused me to Yelp Bookmark De Cabeza. I also had some coworkers who raved about the restaurant, so it was on my Must Eat list. Some of our family joined us for our first visit to De Cabeza and we loved the food, the great customer service from Melanie, the hospitality of the Chef Owner, and I especially enjoyed my Lamb Head.
De Cabeza is located in South San Diego, specifically in old Chula Vista. The restaurant can be found on the busy Broadway street within a small outdoor strip mall where you can find Metro, a nail business, and an insurance spot. It's across from Roberto's Taco Shop, Pho Hung Cali, and a short distance from Costco. On a busy evening, parking can be tough to find. De Cabeza takes reservations via the Yelp app and I highly suggest that you make them in advance. From the outside, the restaurant looks small, but they definitely pack the amount of seating in the restaurant. There's a large mural of the Chef Owner holding a cabeza, yellow wood paneling throughout the restaurant and on the tables, and several televisions showing the YouTube episodes of the restaurant. We loved the customer service provided by our waitress Melanie and the hospitality by the Chef Owner. Melanie's happy demeanor was infectious and she was so friendly.
The Rockstar Eater featured food from De Cabeza that enticed me to want to experience what the food critic had scrumptiously portrayed. On Yelp, the restaurant has a 5-star rating and many positive reviews. De Cabeza specializes in Mexican food, so the menu contains tacos, rolled tacos, enchiladas, combination plates, quesadillas, agua frescas, cervezas, and desserts. As we were deciding what to order, Melanie asked if we wanted to order grasshoppers, which invoked hesitancy from my family and I. Melanie kindly went to the back of the kitchen, grabbed samples for all 7 of us, and we tried grasshoppers for the first time. It actually was tasty, but we decided not to order them. I had to order the lamb head, I ordered two orders of the Chicharrón de Queso aka Grilled Cheese, I ordered a pork belly taco, and I completed my order with Consomé con Carne aka Broth with Meat. For the tacos, you might want to order the salsa on the side because several of my family thought the tacos were spicy. I devoured my pork belly taco and probably would have ordered more if not for all the food I ate. The chicharrón de queso is a large rolled up grilled cheese that was addicting especially when you spread provided guacamole on it. The consomé was tasty and would be perfect for someone feeling under the weather. The star for me was the Lamb Head. I ordered it complete, so it came out as a skull with an abundant amount of fall off the head skull meat. That lamb head has to be shared because it was too much for one person. Other customers gawked at that lamb head when it was brought to our table. With the provided corn tortillas, I enjoyed every single taco I made with the yummy lamb meat.
Dining at De Cabeza El Unico was an amazing experience and we're glad we got to celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary at a restaurant that has delicious, experiential food and noteworthy customer service. Next time my family eats at De Cabeza, I'm making sure someone shares the Lamb Head with me. I got dibs on the lamb cheek.