El Camino Cantina Surfers Paradise — Restaurant in Gold Coast City

We went to el Camino last night for a nice and fun dinner with my partner, and we had the worst experience in a restaurant ever.

My partner is vegan and I’m vegetarian, we ordered the veggie option nachos and veggie option tacos at the bar, to ask if the veggie option of tacos can be made vegan option instead, to what the person in the counter said not problem at all.

When we received our food, we realised that we forgot to add the guacamole, so we ask the lady if we can order through her the guacamole and also a drink (to not have to be in our phones as we were really hungry and the food was already on the table. To what she said “yes, no problem, can you go to the bar to order please?” So there was not food service at all.

When we look at our food, the vegan option tacos that we ordered came just with the “meat” (that was mushrooms) and nothing else, to what we were really disappointed. As we specially asked for a vegan option.

I asked very respectfully to the lady that seated us if we were able to have anything instead of the cheese that this originally comes with, literally anything, like avocado, tomatoes, lettuce, corn, or any sauce, etc. The lady completely understood so she took it back to the kitchen to re-make it and bring another one with something else.

We were waiting, when another lady came (a manager) and explain to us that the food is gonna take a little while as they will remake it for us, to what we said not problem at all.

When the food arrived, the food was completely cold, the 3 tortillas were taken straight from the fridge and put it on our plate. I feel so embarrassed and upset that I have to bother somebody again to fix our dish, for what we were waiting already twice the time it usually does.

I asked the same lady that came to talk to us, to come again, and told her that the tortillas were very cold, I asked her if she could please touch the tacos. The lady touched the tortillas and completely agreed with us, as they were literally taken from the fridge.

The lady took the plate for the 3rd time to the kitchen, to fix it once again. And then when someone came back with our food, they didn’t even say sorry guys, or try to explain something, anything.

We were still hungry when we finished our food, but we were so upset of the bad experience with the food, plus the unfriendly staff, that we had to just walked out and go to another restaurant to finish our dinner.

My question is, is there any head chef in this place? How not body is checking if the food is being made properly? Or if someone already complain about something as they not having a good experience, how is the head chef not checking that the second time goes perfectly? or is just that they do not care and laugh about it?.

Food 0/10 Customer service 0/10

Definitely not...

From the minute I arrived at El Camino last night, I was automatically disappointed after being greeted by Ally at the door. She started by asking “do you have a reservation”? To which I replied "yes, I have 2 in fact...." She immediately cut me off and snapped back in what can only be described as a defensive and accusatory tone, saying “why do you have 2 bookings”?? I calmly replied “well, if you let me finish speaking I was getting to that”. I had already been in touch with their reservations team and had been communicating with someone by text to organise my daughter’s group booking of 12, and another table close by for 2 parents. Ally snapped back again saying we would have to be at the same table as the party were all minors. I calmly showed her the text conversation I had been having with one of her superiors about how the tables would need to be close by but would be a table of 12 and one of 2. Ally changed her tune and then sits me down in a holding area while she figures it out, comes back to me and takes me to my table. Within minutes, she's back and slaps a piece of paper on my table telling me what time we had until we would need to vacate. So far; the customer service was deplorable and I felt like I was a massive inconvenience bringing 14 paying customers to their establishment. Once the party were all seated (directly in front of our table; so well within eyesight), another waitress starts interrogating the girls telling them they couldn't order on their own (for the record they were all 15-16 years old, so hardly children), so I stood up and asked what the problem was and this waitress told me they couldn’t order themselves being minors. I again explained that I would be doing all their ordering myself off the QR code. Seriously, the customer service in this place is non-existent and you have to order everything yourself anyway - and still get charged a service fee! I wanted a couple of jugs of soft drinks for their table but they wouldn't accommodate me, only option was individual soft drinks at $7 each ($84 on soft drinks is absolute madness and I feel sick that I even paid this), not to mention the hundreds of dollars I paid this place for awful customer service. I arrived and left feeling angry and let down. I will never again set foot in an El Camino anywhere. Ally - you ruined my entire...

We went for the high reviews but were heavily disappointed. The front desk asked us to wait then they started seating others ahead of us. We had to remind them that we’re waiting and then asked whether we can take a table for four that was opening up. We then asked whether they can clean it and the server kind of looked at us saying that’s clean. We literally had to move used cups of water to another vacant table.

We ended up with no water for the entire meal. You will find out later why we did not ask for water.

I ended up cleaning this myself and I had tissues of Mexican sauce that would’ve been on my elbows if I hadn’t cleaned it.

Then we started ordering, to see the physical menu they gave us at the front had items that were not available so we asked the person who sounded and walked around like the Manager about this. She sounded slightly condescending and said “oh no if that menu item is not there in the online menu then it’s not available”.

I wish they told us this 15 minutes before that while we were waiting to be seated and before they gave us the menu so that we wouldn’t have wasted our time

Then the food arrived.. The food was okay. Nothing to write Home about for the 7000+ reviews with 4.7. I do feel the fake Google reviews that forces people to consider these great restaurants especially in tourist locations is a real thing as I would never come here, but I’ve already made the mistake and paid $200 For the meal as my daughter wanted the hat and churros.

When we got our drinks, my wife’s beer was luke warm, flat and had no taste of the great Northern in it so we had to have it repoured. At least the bartender did not flinch when I asked a repour.

In the other drink that we has ordered, it was meant to have had a cherry on top (“of Course”) but came without one but by that time we were so tired of all the pain and letdowns that we were like “just let it go”…

It’s probably an understatement to say how disappointed we are and Google definitely should be looking at fake reviews as this cannot be the Service of a 4.7 star rated restaurant with 7000+ reviews

Especially in a tourist town where most of the people coming here would not be familiar with...