Freds Mexican Cafe - Restaurants On Maui Kihei, Hawaii

Fred's Mexican Cafe is located right on South Kihei Road in Kihei, right across the street from Kamaole Beach Park II (Iliiliholo Beach). They have free onsite parking and offer Mexican style food in a very casual and fun atmosphere. This is the very definition of touristy dining.

We arrived for dinner and the super friendly hostess (sorry, didn't get a name but young, short, blonde girl is the best I can offer up) talked us into taking a souvenir photo (it's free) in the Moose and Fred display board (one of those things you stick your head through so your face appears on the body of the characters on the other side). That pretty much sums up the overall mood at this place: fun, goofy, happy. Kudos to the hostess for making things fun and setting the mood.

Service from our waitress (Erika) was nice and friendly, though a bit slow with refills on drinks and salsa. The place was fairly busy so that's more of an observation than a major complaint but there is room for improvement there.

We started with their queso appetizer which was okay. It tasted good but not great. The chips that came with were heavily salted and when we asked about getting new chips Erika told us that they all come in one batch and pretty much left it at that. No attempt was made to resolved that issue and we found it hard to believe that all of the chips were this heavy on the salt. This falls into the complaint category. We did really enjoy their salsa, good stuff.

I ordered the chicken fajitas ($16.90) and they were tasty, very tender, and perfectly cooked. You only get 3 flour tortillas so a few more would be nice but my real complaint is that they charged us $1.95 for a super tiny amount of shredded cheese and $2.95 for a small scoop of guacamole. We knew there would be an up-charge for these items when she asked us if we wanted them but didn't realize we would be looking at another $5 on top of $17 fajitas. For $17 you should get cheese and guacamole. The cheese was enough for one fajita so to charge $2 is just a rip off. My soda was a more reasonable $2.50.

Overall, the food is very good. It's not the best Mexican food I've ever had, not by a long shot, but it is good all on its own and I will certainly eat here again and do highly recommend it. If the prices were a bit cheaper (or those add-on-items included) and service was stepped up a bit and the restaurant was just a tiny bit cleaner then I would easily rate it as a 4.5 or higher. As it stands now, it's a solid 4 star.