El Rodeo

We frequent El Rodeo often enough and have never had a bad experience. The staff is always friendly and willing to accomodate. Even manners are important, which is great for my kids. They love to try and order in spanish and the staff helps them with their words. We had a magic trick performance the latest time we were there, which everyone turned around to watch. The food is always excellent and comes out quickly. Other restaurants we consume too much chips and salsa, but there isn't time for that here - food is served promptly!

Eaten here many times.  Never had a bad experience.  All around good mexican restaurant.

This review is going to be mostly about the service.

My wife and I have been regular customers at El Rodeo for at least 5 years now. The food is hit or miss, sometimes being very fresh and tasty, and other times tasting as though it was leftovers from the previous day. The service is sometimes non-existent as the wait staff likes to flirt with the girl up front as often as possible. With all that said, though, we still ate there at least once a month because for all the bad, there was some good. A couple of the waiters go out of their way to make you feel welcome and are very attentive. This review, however, was not one of those times.

This evening (7/19/12) my wife and I ate there. She had a steak and cheese burrito that was mostly burrito and lacking in both the steak and cheese departments, and I have the fajitas rodeo (which consists of steak, chicken, pulled pork, and chorizo) of which the pork and chorizo were pretty good, and the steak and chicken very bland and dry.

Halfway done with my meal, I ran out of tortillas and asked for some more. 15 minutes later I went up to the front to request the manager when my server miraculously reappears. I asked him for the manager since the girl at the register was busy and he told me to talk to her. Ok, I said. I then explained to her that I'd requested additional tortillas to finish my meal with, now, 20 minutes ago and never received them, nor had I even seen our waiter until just then. I explained that half my meal was now stone cold, and I wasn't going to be finishing it, with or without tortillas. Instead of trying to make it right in any way, I was informed that the fajitas come with three tortillas, and additional would cost extra. I explained to her that would have been fine, but I didn't feel I should pay full price for half a meal. I then asked if she was the manager, and she informed me that she was not. I asked for the manager (again) and was told he wasn't there. I was also informed that our wonderful waiter was the one in charge, which smelled as truthful as a $3 bill. Undeterred in my quest for a person in charge, someone who would make at least some attempt at salvaging my evening (and my temper) I asked if she could call him and was told flatly "No". "Ok", say I, "when will he be in?". She looks at me with those same darting eyes and says "I don't know" At this point I'd had more than enough, and told her I thought she was lying to me, and the look on her face just confirmed it. Throughout this encounter she and the waiter kept repeating that the entree came with only 3 tortillas, and that it was my fault for not finishing my meal. I gave up, and paid the bill, which I'll be disputing with the bank shortly after wrapping up this review

The short, tl;dr version: I had a complaint, and they did not seem to care, nor was there anyone with any authority to make anything right.

Moral of the story: This place is mediocre to ok depending on the time of day you eat and how much was leftover from the previous dinner service. If you have any issues, however, don't expect any recompense. Losing $30 - $100+ a month in business was less important than the $12.99 my meal cost to them.