Los Jimadores

I was in Peoria, IL on a business trip, looking for a decent lunch place. I was craving Mexican for some odd reason, and was pleasantly surprised to find decent Mexican in Peoria. Good chips and salsa. I had the pollo yucatan which was quite flavorful.

This is alright Mexican food for the Peoria area.  There wasn't anything wrong with the food, but there wasn't any spectacular about it either.  It hit the spot for a Mexican food craving.

Service is fast, literally.  We could barely get our waiter's attention because he kept running by our table.  Because of this, any drink refill requests took a long time.  It got a little annoying by the end of our meal because we wanted to get the check but it was hard to get his attention.  Other than that, service was fine.

I had high hopes after reading the mixed reviews here, but the dining experience actually got worse as time went by.  This is my first review on Yelp because I feel so strongly about NOT eating at this place again!

To start off, we were served FROZEN salsa! When we asked for some more, our waiter returned with another frozen container of salsa! Needless to say, it didn't taste very good at all, especially with the stale chips.

The margarita I had was ok, but was definitely made from a mix. I had asked our server for a water and NEVER received one.

When the food arrived, I started to loose my appetite. I had ordered  the fried chicken  chimichanga (something I usually order at Mexican restaurants as a comparison meal). These were drowning in some kind of mystery sauce (enchilada, maybe?), that resembled buffalo wing sauce. The menu stated that it was to come with guacamole, which I love. But THIS dish had about half a teaspoon of guac on it. When I asked for more, I realized what I wasn't missing....tasteless guac that wasn't even close to fresh! It was somewhat browned, so I assume it had been prepared that morning, or the day prior. I ate half of the dish, then decided to stop because i couldn't stand it any more. The sauce overpowered everything, and made the entire dish mushy and tasteless.

My friend ordered a mixed enchilada platter (bean, chicken, and beef). He had to stop eating the chicken enchilada after two bites because the meat was bright pink, and clearly not cooked through. He immediately lost his appetite and asked for the check.

The overall service was horrible.  Initially, the man who took our order kind of swarmed around us until we were ready to order, something that annoys me immensely. After that, about 4 servers came to our table bringing us different items at different times throughout the meal.

Now, my friend and I have both worked in the restaurant industry as servers, so we understand the importance of tipping well. With that said, we also understand the importance of imparting a message to a place so horrible as this. The service and meal were so atrocious, that we did not leave a tip. We wanted them to know that this service and food is absolutely unacceptable, and that we won't be coming back.