El Camino Cantina Chermside — Restaurant in Brisbane City

Hello El Camino.

On Friday 21st June 2024 we attended your Chermside Queensland store. This was an evening the 6 of us had looked forward to as a celebration with friends visiting Brisbane. After hearing our interstate friends positive experiences at El Camino in NSW, we chose your restaurant to re-experience a night of celebration. We chose the $89 tex mex fiesta. With two of our party not consuming alcohol we were hopeful of the promised “3 course feast” to justify this expense.

Our excitement soon turned to disappointment as we were advised the longed for frozen beverages were only alcoholic. Having a pregnant member of the party and another on medication preventing alcohol intake, we were left with the standard drink options other restaurants have, despite specifically choosing El Camino for the iconic frozen beverages. Furthermore, our other 4 party members who excitedly sought to try many flavours, were firmly instructed by our less than warm hostess that we were only allowed to order one tower of drink at a time. Meaning everyone was forced to drink the same flavour and it was not possible for us to have a sense of choice and control as to our individual wants.

As a party of 6, paying $89 each, $534 in total, we tolerated, with bewilderment, this restriction (which is no where to be seen on your websites advertising poster for this package…). Instead we turned our focus to the exciting 3 course “feast” awaiting us. Awaiting indeed… Whilst we were greeted upon seating with a small bowl of mostly crushed up corn chips and small dipping sauce, the wait for sustenance was extensive. After approximately 45 minutes we questioned our hostess as to when the tacos would be served. This also was met with further delays. After approximately an hour, beautiful meats were served. They were delicious. Unfortunately there was scarce breads and we were left wanting for more tacos to utilise the meat filling. Upon asking for more breads we waited approximately a further 30 minutes for one bowl of bread to arrive to consume the cold meat which was mostly picked at over that time as we were starving. The sides were also delicious, yet sparse and insufficient to adequately top the number of breads. Given the firm treatment from our hostess (leaving us feeling like school children hauled into the principals office to be reprimanded) we didn’t dare ask for more sides.

By the time we asked about the arrival time for the 3rd course of churros we were hungry and hoping this sweet treat would fill the cravings. Unfortunately again we were met with a small approximately 10cm churros stick in water-like runny chocolate sauce. We had hoped for a more generous serve rather than feeling like we were on the 2000’s series of big brother on staples after losing the weekly challenge.

Our hostesss appeared to either be quite busy or effortfully avoiding us to minimise opportunities to ask for follow up drinks or query food. At one time when having waited an extended period to refill the “bottomless” drinks, we asked another hostess for our order. Within moments after that order, our main hostess appeared suddenly reprimanding our whole table for speaking to another hostess. Again we felt like school students in the principals office receiving the cane or needing to write lines “I will not order beverages from another hostess… I will not order beverages from another hostess…”

Overall it felt like intentional tactics to minimise the provision of “bottomless” drinks and the “feast” was more of a famine. For a table paying over $500, we expected better than this. This experience leaves a sour taste in our mouth and reticent to return. Please do better so people can have an enjoyable experience when going out to celebrate and choosing...

I have dined at South Bank before and the experience was enjoyable, however a recent trip to the Chermside restaurant was disappointing.

We sat down, waited for a 3rd friend to join but was not greeted/given any table water or asked if we wanted to order drinks. There was also no scanner on the table to order food or drinks so we were confused as they have had a table scanner previously. We waited, 20 mins later we flag someone down to order drinks. We tried to order the grape nerd frozen margarita, and another drink. They came back to us 15 mins later (felt like eternity when you're thirsty and it's hot) telling us they can't do that flavour anymore, so I asked for strawberry frozen. 10 Mins later they come back to us that they can't do it frozen only on the rocks. So I say sure that's fine. This is Saturday at 7-8pm so peak time, bit odd to be out of flavours already? Our friend has arrived and we order food. We also asked for table water which never turned up, which was pretty crap given other tables were getting table water without asking! Cauliflower tacos for me, which usually slap, but they were a bit cold and underwhelming (lack of the toppings). We had no way to order more drinks or food from the table so had to flag someone down every time we wanted something. No one ever came to check on the food or drinks or ask if we wanted to order anything else, we were completely ignored by staff. It was frustrating especially for the weekend, we were trying to have a few drinks but the wait time, lack of service and inability to manage a half full restaurant on a Saturday night was shocking. My partners nachos were average and we felt the string cheese was an odd touch, instead of real cheese. My friends dish was $36 and was also quite underwhelming, sure it was good but for $36 you get a plate of chicken, onion and capsicum and a small bowl of cheese.

El Camina, please up your game and do something about this. We spent alot of money on Saturday and are disappointed that a special outing left us thirsty, frustrated and wishing we went elsewhere.

Some tips and feedback

ensure you have all the items on your menu before a peak time like a Saturday night train your staff to actually give table service and not ignore customers (you might make more money if you'd come to our table more) more timely updates about what food/drinks you don't have and give customers options instead of making them wait 30 mins for a drink when they didn't know what you didn't have because you didn't tell us! friendly wait staff who don't ignore customers while running around serving everyone else Table water when people arrive and sit down, especially in summer check on people's food when it arrives have more staff on...

Service could be better. We came in on Saturday for my sisters 30th - I booked a table of 10 for the Tex Mex package @ $79 each. There was a “10% discretionary surcharge” whatever that means, apparently it’s to cover the complimentary water and chips you get while you’re waiting but that doesn’t exactly mean “complimentary” then hey.. So our table alone had paid $800+ which is a lot of money we ain’t rich lol. But as soon as I realised the drinks came in cocktail glasses and were taking 10-15 mins just to be refilled I asked if we could change to towers instead (I’ve come once before for the tacos and towers and that was great, fast prompt service and food was amazing) but we were told no we can’t do that - so that really sucked. There really should be a menu in store so we can suss out our options better cause I booked online cause it was recommended by a gf but wouldn’t have done the Tex Mex had I known we were going to have slow service AND had deconstructed tacos that we had to make ourselves 🥲 when you’re 4 margaritas deep the last thing you want to do is make your own food. Also our whole sitting we felt the managers eyes + half the staff on us from the back table - word of advice if you want patrons to feel comfortable especially paying $83 pp watching them like security will not help. Lastly, we all first ordered by 1:35pm and first round came to us a bit before 2pm, but we were told at 3:17pm that was our last round (it’s supposed to be 2 hours) I’m thankful you’s honoured a couple more rounds because of the delays but maybe in future the delay between drinks getting topped up should be taken into consideration so people aren’t paying $80+ for 1.5hrs service when it clearly says 2hrs. It felt like we were in a taxi deliberately driving slow so he could get the meter up, if you get what I mean. So yeah we won’t be in a rush to come back here and if/when we do will definitely avoid the tex mex package, might give the 1hr tacos package another go...