Grill 23 Authentic Mexican

Birria Tacos lead the order at Grill 23, and the rest of the menu turns on it. Crunchy corn tortillas, onion, cilantro, lime, salsa verde, Mexican hot sauce, and a cup of birria caldo for dipping — the plate tells a first-time table what kind of Mexican counter they have walked into. The downtown London restaurant, family-owned and operating from Fullarton Street since 2022, treats the taco list as the centre of gravity and lets bowls, samplers, quesadillas, and a Family Combo orbit it.

The taco board reads as a tour through specific sauces rather than a single template repeated across proteins. Al Pastor, Carne Asada, Chorizo, and Guadalajara-style barbacoa sit alongside Birria, with a Grilled Shrimp version that brings garlic butter, chipotle mayo, and jalapeño-avocado sauce into the rotation, and a Black Bean-Quinoa Vegan option that keeps the meatless lane on the same board rather than parked in a footnote. The Birria-coa Sampler pairs two birrias with two barbacoas in a gluten-free build for guests who want both lanes in one order. Beyond the tacos, Build your Bowl turns the same proteins and toppings into a base-driven meal on rice, quinoa, or spring mix; Queso Birria and the MONSTERdilla cover the quesadilla side; Esquites and Mexican Guacamole sit on the shareable end; and the Family Combo bundles eight tacos, six quesadillas, chips, salsa, and sour cream into one order built for four. Dessert is a real beat rather than an afterthought — Tres Leches Cake, listed as gluten-free, in Dulce de Leche or Nutella.

What the kitchen does with all of that is hold its line. Sauces are item-specific. The Spanish names — Esquites, Agua Fresca de Jamaica, Queso Birria — go unanglicized. Gluten-free anchors are flagged at the dish level rather than buried at the bottom of the menu, and the vegan taco lives on the same board as everything else instead of in a separate diet section. The dessert ends with a Mexican cake rather than reaching for a generic chocolate option. Drinks stay in the same lane — aguas frescas in place of soft drinks for guests who want to keep the order Mexican start to finish. And the birria caldo comes in its own cup — guests dip, not the kitchen.

The operating cadence backs that focus. The downtown counter runs noon to eight, Monday through Saturday, with Sunday closed; a sibling Grill 23 in Ilderton picks up the brunch daypart the London location doesn't try to serve, leaving the Fullarton kitchen free to concentrate on lunch and dinner inside one short, predictable window. Ordering is direct — counter or online, both running through the restaurant's own site — and the same flow carries takeout and the weekend taco offer, six-fifty tacos all day Friday and Saturday, without scattering across third-party apps. The practical takeaway is the same: gluten-free friendly, online ordering, a recurring weekend special the kitchen has chosen to run as a structural piece of the week.

The way the menu reads on a working Tuesday is the read worth keeping. A two-taco lunch with a glass of Agua Fresca de Jamaica fits the noon window without a reservation; a Build your Bowl stretches the same kitchen into a fuller weeknight meal; the Family Combo lands a shared dinner for four; the weekend pricing turns a Friday into a different kind of order entirely. The board is short on theatre but long on choices — eight taco proteins, a bowl builder, a quesadilla pair that includes Queso Birria, a sampler that doubles up on the kitchen's two strongest moves, and a dessert that does not pretend it is an afterthought. The downtown London counter has built a Mexican lineup specific enough to recognize at a glance, broad enough to handle a mixed table, and disciplined enough to let birria do the work it should.