Breakdown:\n\nAmbiance and Atmosphere - 5 Stars\nFood - 3 Stars\nFood vis-\u00e0-vis Price - 2 Stars\nOn the Balance - 3 Stars\n\nOld Town Tortilla Factory isn't as bad as some of the reviewers on here make it out to be. It's a beautiful place to have a nice dinner and enjoy the lovely Arizona desert climate, and the food is acceptable, too. Where it really stumbles, however, is price, and for that reason my overall opinion is that Old Town Tortilla factory is simply average.\n\nAmbiance - This is where Old Town Tortilla Factory really shines. The place is in a cozy cottage compound with a couple of buildings (one being an old house). The architecture is reminiscent of older architecture in the area, and this place can accommodate anything from small romantic dinners for two to huge banquets and anything in between. The real star is the patio. It is lovely year-round, and the lighting and water details make this a very pleasant place to dine. They even have heaters for those who may get a bit chilly.\n\nFood - The food is just average. It is a fairly standard/conservative/traditional style menu. There isn't a lot of avant-garde cuisine coming out of this place. Still, what they do is done competently. The food was hot, fresh, and perfectly good. It wasn't as good as some of the more authentic Mexican places in town, and you can easily find more flavorful, complex, and spicy traditional food. Still, it's not like their food is bad. It's pretty good, it's just not anything special.\n\nFood vis-\u00e0-vis Price - If you're out on the town for a gastronomical experience divorced from ambiance, the Old Town Tortilla Factory does not offer a particularly compelling value. As I said above, the food isn't bad, but it's just standard. If you put their food in a lineup with dishes from several other restaurants across the southwest, you're not going to be able to distinguish it out of the crowd of other fairly similar dishes. Despite average food, they have significantly above average prices. Expect to pay at least $25-30 per person with one drink and a shared appetizer to go along with one of their lower priced entrees. If you dine toward the top end of their menu, where entrees can reach as high as $35, it's going to be a pricy night. That, combined with the fairly expensive drinks and the $3.99 sharing charge on split entrees, you're not going to walk away from this for the price of \"FourthMeal.\"\n\nOn the whole, I give this place three stars. If I were simply simply reviewing this place based on the food, and I were to divorce the ambiance and atmosphere, it would be a two star joint primarily because of a poor value proposition. However, considering how compelling the atmosphere is, I'll give them the third star. The patio is really remarkable, and it's just a very nice place to sit and relax in the Arizona desert. It's near old town, but it's much more intimate than the very loud establishments closer to Scottsdale Road.\n\nI tend to focus my reviews on food quality, but ambiance is definitely a part of the dining out experience, and that's where Old Town Tortilla Factory shines. The food is average but overpriced, but the space is just lovely. It's not an everyday place, and it's not even a place I would go if I were only craving some Mexican food, but if you need a dining experience where the atmosphere is important (perhaps entertaining some out of town guests), Tortilla Factory is worth a look.
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