El Camino Cantina South Bank — Restaurant in Brisbane City

Last night my wife and I had one of the worst experiences at El Camino.

I hardly ever write reviews, good or bad, but I really cannot let this slide.

After my graduation ceremony, we wanted to go to Mexican (our favourite) to celebrate and had only heard great things about El Camino.

We were seated at an inside table at 8:10 and by 8:20-8:25 we received a bowl of chips and dip.

As we looked over the menu deciding what food and drinks to order, the table beside us was being attended to quite well, so I assumed the service was going to be great.

We then sat until 8:45, still looking around waiting for a server to take our food and drinks order.

We were trying to not be rude to the servers and gestured our hand or make eye contact to get their attention to be served.

During this time, the table beside us had their numerous plates of wings and drinks and a table that had entered around 10 minutes after us had already received their drinks and meals.

We finally had someone come to us at around 8:50 (after my wife had to say excuse me as she walked past) and take our 2 drink and one meal order (we were sharing).

We once again sat until around 9:00pm waiting for our drinks, to which we then saw the manager and asked him what was going on.

He apologised and said he will check on everything and insisted our food and drinks will come.

By 9:10 we had our drinks and by 9:20 I said to my wife I just wanted to go home.

We found the manager and said we are leaving, and he once again apologised and said that they had just changed to table service and there was a learning curve with the new staff.

We understood that, but we were confused as to how every other table were receiving their food and drinks in a timely manner and ours wasn't.

It seemed as though we were forgotten about, and it was a super disappointing end to what was supposed to be a celebration of hard work with my wife.

We were offered a voucher from the manager which was nice, but we declined as I didn't want to give El Camino my service.

Once again, a really really...

very rarely do I leave reviews to places but the experience I had here on Saturday 28th was horrible. Firstly our group arrived for an 8pm booking but weren’t really given any instructions on where to wait to be seated, we were only greeted by security but not a single staff member in sight for quite a long period of time. We were stuck behind a couple groups all of us left to wait out in the rain for 45 minutes with new groups arriving being told they’d have to go elsewhere despite everyone having bookings. I understand that you guys were all booked out but we had all had these reservations well in advance, there should have been a table available for us on arrival as that is the whole point of a booking. Within that time as well our group was only acknowledged 2 times the first time a lady said she would find a way to make it work only to disappear for another 20 mins and I don’t even think it was the same lady that had finally seated us after the long wait. We were taken to our table and then left again without any instructions again, no barcode to order on the table and no staff member to take our order or even give us menus until a member from our group had to get up and go find someone 2 times (the first to get menus and the second to have our order taken). The meals were quick which was great but the frozen margaritas weren’t even frozen at all, and any time we’d want to order something else we’d have to flag someone down which was hard as every single team member was dodging our signals. I was honestly quite disappointed with this whole night as it was something I was looking forward to since booking as I used to love this place but after this really poorly organised night and service it’s really put...

I wish I could give this place zero stars. We came here with our family for taco Tuesday as our usual favorite Mexican places were closed and I thought I'd give consideration to the many positive google reviews on here and try it out.

This was a huge mistake as evidenced by the plethora of issues

Cons: Understaffing. We weren't allowed to order with the wait staff, instead you must order via their QR code app due to their cost saving measures of reduced staffing. Trying to assist my elderly parents to order via QR code was a challenge especially as one of them is visually impaired and they don't have smart phones

I have never tasted a margarita so bad. $17 will get you a sticky lime cordiale on ice straight from a slushy machine with unfortunately what tasted like no tequila (tequila is highly recommended if you decide to suffer the experience).

The glassware that the disappointing cocktails were served in was chipped/broken as you can see in our photo, surely this is a workplace hazard issue? The thought of sustaining a laceration after the disappointment of the lime cordiale is almost too much to bear.

We were given no plates, no cutlery, and it took about 10 minutes to get service to get anything brought across again as they were highly understaffed.

Pros: The tacos were fine. $2 is good value if you're happy to tolerate terrible cocktails and no services.

Ultimately we left and went to a different restaurant down the road instead of staying to eat any more. I enthusiastically discourage...