El Arroyo - very bad ... very, very bad TexMex

Bruce D. wrote:
>I ate lunch with a friend at El Arroyo today (6/16/00).  I hadn't eaten
>there in a nearly a year, and the last time I did, the Tex Mex plate
>that I ordered was reasonably good.  This time, however, the best that
>I can say about the chicken and shrimp fajitas is that I didn't die
>after lunch.  This was the worst example of Tex Mex I've ever attempted
>to eat in any restaurant in Austin.  My friend ordered flautas.  Her
>assessment was no kinder than mine.  I think I'll put El Arroyo on my
>"avoid-like-the-plague" list.

First of all, which location?  There are several, even some in the Dallas area.

I ate there I guess about a month ago (the Far West location), and it was pretty much fine.  The one exception was that they didn't do the prep work on my chicken quite right, so I ended up with a little gristle in my food.  But that kind of thing happens from time to time.

Still, I will grant that their quality control seems to be lacking from time to time.  One time I went and ordered the Santa Fe Enchiladas. These are supposed to be made with blue corn tortillas, but when I got them, they were made with regular tortillas.  This would have been fine if the waitress had asked me ahead of time, but she didn't.

Anyway, my point is that personally I like El Arroyo, but I have to give them an "E" for effort since although they have some good ideas, their execution is sometimes lacking.

  - Logan

NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 18:11:42 CDT
Organization: Road Runner - Texas
Xref: usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu austin.food:8199

That's interesting.

There's an El Arroyo in Dallas as well. We pretty much had the same conclusion for that one.

Rob

Bruce D. wrote:
> I ate lunch with a friend at El Arroyo today (6/16/00).  I hadn't eaten
> there in a nearly a year, and the last time I did, the Tex Mex plate
> that I ordered was reasonably good.  This time, however, the best that
> I can say about the chicken and shrimp fajitas is that I didn't die
> after lunch.  This was the worst example of Tex Mex I've ever attempted
> to eat in any restaurant in Austin.  My friend ordered flautas.  Her
> assessment was no kinder than mine.  I think I'll put El Arroyo on my
> "avoid-like-the-plague" list.
>
> Regards
>
>

NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 23:32:57 CDT
Organization: SBC Internet Services
Xref: usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu austin.food:8200

I agree,
They are horrible at the Round Rock HWY79 location too. 5 of us ate, took 1/2 hour just to get tea and chips, then 35 mins for the food to come. I wasn't too hundry so I ordered French fries, when food finally came, they hand me a little plate of tater tots (I hate tater tots) and said "fries?" i looked and said, these arent fries.  - yeah I know we give people tater tots when we run out of fries.  I thought it would have been better to come TELL me they were out so I could select something else, then they stood impatiently while i tried to find something else on the menu I had them bring back out.  I hate when they hover so just said forget it. (if you ordered a baked potato somewhere and they just brought you chips with no explanation what would you do? - duh they're all potatoes right? -- idiots) The manager didn't give a sh*t and one of my friends' meals was some chicken monterrey cheese enchilada - but he found that they had secretly replaced the chicken with grease - really there was like 2 bites of chicken in the whole meal. manager sucked too and didnt care when I said I doubt I'd ever return, and I havent.

The table next to us had same prob and was comped for 1 entree that was messed up.

I served our table chips and tracked down refills twice waiting for the food and the waiter NEVER stopped by! Also the bus boy that was bussing tables with a nasty wet rag I noticed he never washed between touching the really dirty rag and getting people chips by holding the plastic chip basket in one hand and scooping chips and holding them on top with the other...disgusting.  I'll never be back, surprised no one got sick.  Manager didnt even care about that. he was obviously stressed by all the complaints but that's tough.

Craig