Colita

Colita sits inside Daniel del Prado's growing roster of Minneapolis rooms, the one that turns toward coastal Mexican cooking rather than the Italian or Spanish lanes his other kitchens work. The reservation book runs busy enough that a work dinner needs planning ahead, and the room reads as upscale rather than casual, priced for an occasion more than a weeknight taco run. Octopus shows up as a standout, grilled or charred enough to hold its own as a shared plate before the mains arrive. Tacos draw the strongest praise in the record, with diners who have eaten Mexican food widely elsewhere ranking them among the best in the state. Five plates split between two people reads as a full meal, which says something about portioning built for sharing rather than solo ordering.

That said, the record is not uniform. At least one diner who came in with high expectations, and who measured the kitchen against real Mexican food eaten elsewhere, walked away calling it the weakest of the del Prado rooms. That split matters for a coastal Mexican kitchen in a city where Colita competes for attention against District del Sol in St. Paul and Lake Street's Mexican corridor in Minneapolis, both working from deeper, longer-running community roots. Colita's angle is different: a chef-driven, upscale take rather than a marketplace or family-run counter, and it should be judged on those terms rather than against Cesar Chavez Street or Mercado Central.

The neighborhood context favors it as a destination room, not a corner stop, and the price point signals the same. Where the kitchen lands closest to its ambition is in the seafood and the tacos; where it wavers is consistency room to room within del Prado's own lineup. Anyone booking should walk in expecting a chef's interpretation of coastal Mexican food, not a direct line to any single regional tradition.