We expected Mexican artifacts or at least Mexican artwork adorning the walls. We expected a warm atmosphere with warm-colored lights. Instead, we were immersed in a cool, almost bare atmosphere... mostly bare walls... cool colors... very reminiscent of a banquet hall cafeteria for employees... even the ceiling was a boring cheap, ugly suspended ceiling like we were in someone's poorly designed basement or some cheap commercial retail space.
The little bit of artwork sparsely dotted here and there was nice (like the floral arrangement above) but the artwork and decorations were few and far between. Mostly, we saw empty walls. Worse yet, the walls were painted a cool blue, not at all like bright or warm colors we envision for a Mexican restaurant nor have seen in every other Mexican restaurant we've ever had the pleasure to visit.
The dining room was immense and almost completely empty yet it was around 12:30pm on a weekday. I'd expect any good restaurant to be quite crowded at 12:30pm on a weekday with business lunches and typical workday lunches. Consequently, Sheila and I had a pretty good idea that we were going to be sorely disappointed in this restaurant and we weren't even seated yet.
After being seated and after a longer than usual wait for our server, we ordered drinks and they brought us some chips and salsa. Honestly, I was happy to see the chips and salsa because this Mexican restaurant staple was not even on the menu so I had my doubts about whether we would see this usual snack.
The chips were "okay"... they were warm and crisp (ie, not stale) but they seemed like tortilla chips we could pour out of a bag at our house. We expect better from any restaurant. I don't want to go to a restaurant that serves the same level of stuff we can easily serve at home so this was a mild disappointment. Don't get me wrong, it was good that these chips were crisp and warm but we expect delicious freshly-made chips at a Mexican restaurant. We've visited other restaurants and gotten clearly stale chips but that wasn't the case here so at least that was a spot of good news.
The salsa, on the other hand... uggg... and I mean UGGGGG. Although I believe this salsa was freshly made because I identified some fresh cilantro in it, it definitely resembled and tasted like cheap supermarket jarred salsa. It had a thick, bland corn starch tomato-based gelatinous consistency just like all the typical disgusting jarred salsas you find in a supermarket (I abhor this type of salsa). It looked so unappetizing that I didn't even want to try it but I was hungry.
When I go to a restaurant.... any restaurant that serves salsa... I expect all freshly chopped ingredients and very little thickening agents such as corn starch or similar. There should be no need for thickening agents. This was a major disappointment and a pretty disgusting start to our meal. Things were heading south more quickly now...
For what it's worth, whenever we get good chips and salsa served at our table, we usually eat the whole basket of chips and salsa. That wasn't the case on this day. We left more than half of the basket and that was due to the lousy, boring and rather tasteless salsa mush.
Our meals seemed to arrive very quickly... too quickly. We had a long wait to see a server and now our meals arrived within just a few short minutes and I mean just a few short minutes (definitely less than five minutes). I was instantly skeptical that it could be a good meal to have arrived this quickly and I was right.
Sheila ordered a chicken burrito of some sort. It looked okay and she says it was "okay" but also added that she doesn't know much about burritos so she couldn't comment on whether it was good or bad. It was edible. She did, however, complain that it was very bland and pretty much only chicken similar to an uninspired, bland chicken wrap. Any other stuffing in her burrito was so minimal that she could not identify it. She also complained that the rice on the side was dry and tasteless. I agreed.
I should note here that Sheila prefers her food to be mostly mild rather than spicy but even she complained that all this food tasted exceptionally bland.... quite tasteless, actually. If she was complaining that the food is bland, then it is truly disgustingly bland. This food was bland for even a Wendy's or McDonalds nevermind a Mexican restaurant where distinctive flavors should almost burst and then melt in your mouth. This was bland, bland, bland.
I will typically order a "more traditional" Mexican dish whenever we go to a Mexican restaurant but, after our disappointment with what we were seeing thus far from this restaurant, I chose to play it safe by ordering a basic steak fajita dish.... at least I thought I was playing it safe... what could go wrong with a rather simple Tex-Mex dish in a Mexican-American restaurant? Just about every restaurant makes this rather simple dish well. This is a staple in many types of restaurants so it should be a safe bet at a Mexican restaurant, right? This assumption turned out to be a huge mistake!
When my steak fajitas arrived, I was instantly accosted with the distinctive smell of a Chinese beef dish! I hesitantly tasted it... it clearly had a Chinese taste. It sort of tasted like it was pan-broiled with an oyster sauce or, at a minimum, some soy sauce. "What the h....!" I thought this was a highly rated Mexican restaurant??? Why does my meal smell and taste exactly like a Chinese dish? This isn't suitable nor acceptable for any restaurant nevermind a Mexican restaurant.
There didn't seem to be any Mexican spices in my dish whatsoever. All I could taste was this Chinese-base flavor. This was well beyond simply disappointing... it was absolutely disgusting. I expected tender sliced steak but instead found very thin, twisted, low-quality steak of some sort on my plate. Referring to this meat as "steak" on the menu was very misleading and only set our minds to higher expectations. Instead, I got garbage beef that tasted like a Chinese beef dish.
To make matters worse, the peppers in my fajitas were so overcooked they were mushy goo and there seemed to be no Mexican spices at all in this dish. First, I found that my fajitas tasted like a Chinese dish, then I found that the whole meal was blander than bland (other than that oyster/soy sauce taste) and now I find that the peppers were a gooey mess. Needless to say, I found the steak fajitas to be quite bland, uninspired, and even disgusting. This was not a Tex-Mex dish... not even close. I felt like I was in a mediocre Chinese restaurant.
Sheila even tasted my meal and also thought it tasted like a Chinese beef dish and absolutely nothing like steak fajitas. Uggg.
On the side, I had a plate of rice, lettuce, cheese, and refried beans. On top of this was some melted cheese and drizzled sour cream. The cheese tasted more like part-skim cheese and I absolute hate part-skim cheese. The consistency of part-skim cheese makes me gag. To be honest, however, there was so little cheese on my plate that I'm not sure what it really was. What I do know is that it was quite disappointing.
Unless I order some dietary dish from the menu, I expect real ingredients. Do not, EVER, substitute real creamy ingredients with dietary ingredients if it is not specifically requested! And, I do believe this is what was happening here.
The sour cream was a watery mess like it was sitting around too long. Sour cream should always be fresh with a nice thick consistency in a restaurant! (ie, the sour cream, guacamole, pico de gallo, etc, should be made freshly every single morning) The rice was bland and exceptionally dry. The refried beans tasted like they were scraped out of a huge can of refried beans and heated in a microwave. Ugggg. I could easily get a better meal at home, any day of the week. I could even pull spoiled food out of our fridge and put together a meal just as good (or as bad) as this one.
After our bland, disgusting lunch, for some absurd reason, we gave them another chance to impress us by ordering a dessert. We ordered the churros... (I didn't think of shooting a photo of the churros until after we ate two of them.)
The churros were okay... nothing to write home about nor rave about but they were far better than everything we tried thus far. The weak part of this was the sauces. The chocolate sauce tasted exactly like what I remember Bosco chocolate sauce tasting like. It was very thin though. The caramel sauce was very thin and even watery. I couldn't eat either sauce. The whipped cream was edible though so I dipped into the whipped cream.
As far as how we felt about our server... she was consistently slow throughout our entire visit. We always seemed to be waiting far too long for things.... our initial contact, contact during the meal, and we seemed to wait forever to order dessert and then to ask for our bill. In short, service was lacking and slow even though the restaurant was almost empty. It was pathetic and frustrating.
Typically... and by "typically", I really mean always... we give a restaurant two or three tries to get it right before we decide to never visit them again. Not this time. This meal was so consistently bad, the food so tastelessly bland and, in some cases, with some weird flavors, the atmosphere was not the least bit "Mexican" (other than the music), and the service so slow that we have absolutely no desire to give them another chance. I can't subject my stomach to this place again. Life is too short and there are other, far better options available.
What I can't understand is how this owner's previous restaurant was so highly rated that he felt it would be a wise business decision to open another restaurant. Is the food that different between restaurants? Do the people near the first restaurant have no taste? If this new restaurant is any indication, this new and very large restaurant should never have been opened.
Another thing we noticed is that this place seemed to be dirt cheap in every sense of the word cheap. Cheap means low in quality but most people use the word erroneously to mean low cost... this restaurant was both however. A place this size cannot afford to be cheap in any sense of the word. Costs for all businesses today are very high so prices should be just as high to cover those costs. A place this size needs to be exceptional and always busy in order to be able to pay the bills. Barring any drastic changes, I'll be shocked if this restaurant makes it through 2026. If our experiences remain the norm with no improvement, I doubt they'll make it beyond 2025.
After lunch, we did some shopping at Lowes in preparation of warmer weather when I can get some things repaired and updated around the house. While at Lowes, I needed to visit the restroom because my stomach was not happy with our lunch. After Lowes, we did our weekly grocery shopping at Hannaford's. By the time we arrived at Hannaford's, my spinal injuries were screaming at me so this was an exceptionally painful visit.
I have to say that our visits to Lowes and Hannaford's were far more interesting and satisfying than our lunch though but we were expecting and hoping for the opposite!
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