text: I notice a few reviewers out there having the \"is it authentic?\" debate when it comes to Mexican restaurants. My first concern with Mexican food is the same as it is with any cuisine, and that's \"is it good?\". It's just as easy to make bad Mexican food as it is any other food, but I find so much of it out there, both here in Pittsburgh and in the rest of the country. So much so, in fact, that I had decided to write off eating at Mexican restaurants unless I'm in Chicago, NYC or So Cal, as I've been disappointed so often. The reviews here on Yelp made me think things might be different here at Cal. Taco Shop. Not.\nI started with chips and salsa. The chips were a little greasy, but not really bad...it's the salsa that had me shaking my head. It reminded me of a can of RO*TEL diced tomatoes with green chiles dumped into a molcajete. I don't know to what extent this salsa is homemade, but it seemed to me not at all. They do offer three different pureed salsas at a table where you pick up your fork and napkin, and I found the salsa verde to be alright. I used that on my chips. I ordered chicken enchiladas in mole for my main. Most of us in this country know mole as chocolate sauce, but they can be best defined as chile based sauces thickened with nuts and seeds. These sauces are different all over Mexico, as regional cuisine in that country has stayed really well preserved. Mexican chocolate is used as a flavoring ingredient in some moles, but, when used, is one of up to 80 ingredients that go into the sauce. The mole that most restaurants here in the U.S. attempt to replicate is mole rojo, which hails from the state of Oaxaca. When done right, it's nutty and spicy with just a hint of sweetness in the finish. The mole at California Taco Shop was very one note and overly sweet. There's a ready to use mole paste in a jar out there, Dona Maria Mole Adobo from Hormel, that tastes and looks alot like this mole. My conjecture is that many restaurants use it, as making mole is an all day affair. I don't know if that's what they're doing here, but I am saying that this mole tastes like that. They top their enchiladas in mole with queso anejo, which was the only good thing about them. The refried beans were flavorless and uninteresting. I would say that I'll go back and try other dishes here, but I didn't dine alone, so saw some of the other offerings. It's just not good quality food. It's not being prepared with care, and the ingredients are sub par. They may make their own tortillas, but mine were buried in bad mole, so I can't comment on their attributes. Not. Going. Back.