San Diegans definitely love their Mexican food, with more taco shops and Mexican eateries than one can count. In every neighborhood of the city, we love stuffing our bellies with the delicacies of Mexico and feasting our eyes on the lovely art and culture of our wonderful neighbors to the south.
Casa Rustica is the newest addition to The Village at Pacific Highlands. Casa Rustica combines the delicious cuisines of Mexico in a high-end, elegant setting, featuring homemade tortillas and sauces, with fresh meats and hand-crafted cocktails. Imagine our excitement when we were invited to try out their excellent food!
The menu features Mexican favorites, like carne asada, a taco platter, and red enchiladas, all prepared with fresh ingredients and great care. Start your visit with one of their hand-crafted margaritas, or a paloma, the most popular tequila drink in Mexico. 
Kicking off every meal is a huge bowl of homemade tortilla chips with freshly made salsa. The salsa is very flavorful and not terribly spicy, with plenty of fresh tomato flavor. The chips are incredible, with a perfect crunchy texture and fresh taste.
Of course, the best accompaniment to chips and salsa are margaritas, and these were just perfect. We ordered the Spicy Passion Fruit Margarita, with was a balanced flavor of sour, sweet, and spicy, and I love passion fruit, so it was a win. The Classic Margarita was our other choice, and it was the correct one! The classic was sweet, sour, and refreshing, with lots of lime and fresh flavor.
I love ceviche, so of course, we had to order the Casa Ceviche, with shrimp, tomatillo, red onion, cucumber, serrano, cilantro,
radish, and lime juice. This ceviche is very light, with little spice, and allows the flavor of the fresh shrimp and vegetables to shine. This is a great appetizer, as it is light and easy, to leave room for the very filling entrees. It is also available on the happy hour menu.
For entrees, we Jalisco Style Shrimp and the Chicken en Mole.
The Jalisco Shrimp was divine. I can't think of a better descriptor, but how else can you describe bacon-wrapped, cheese-stuffed shrimp served over poblano cream? These shrimp were rich, satisfying, and completely decadent. I've never been to Jalisco, but if this is how shrimp is done there, I want to go now!
One of my favorite dishes is chicken with mole sauce. Despite being a very traditional dish, the difficulty of preparation makes it a somewhat hard to find dish. The sauce typically requires three days to prepare, and obviously, the sweet, chocolate flavor might not be favored by everyone.
The chicken and sauce was delightful, with a dark, rich flavor. This was more of what is called a dark mole, made with chocolate and no peanut butter. It was slightly sweet, and had a very thick texture.
We ended our meal with some of the best flan of my life. Flan is a custard pudding-like dessert very popular in Latin American cuisine. It is served cold, with the caramel sauce served on top. This flan also included the little tortilla strips, which tasted like teeny tiny churros! It was a truly magical dessert.
Casa Rustica is open for lunch, dinner, and happy hour with special menus for kids, and a date night prix fixe menu.
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