El Camino Cantina Fitzroy — Restaurant in Melbourne

We were a group of 6 that attended on National Taco Day

TLDR: terrible experience. Spilt drinks, long wait, lost order, poor service, food portion reduced to half as they were running out of food but continued to take orders!

Will not return

Contacted management without any reply

To management,

I thought I’d share our recent experience at your restaurant tonight. We attended as a group booking of 6 at 8:30pm tonight and it was a first time for all of us to enjoy the $1 taco deal you had advertised. The night started with a drink accidentally dropped by staff which splattered onto my hair as well as mostly on the floor by our feet. We were asked to mop the floor ourselves with some towels (fair, the waiter couldn’t reach the mop by the end of the table).

Our food eventually came after a reasonably long wait (approx 40ish minutes), but one friend had waited over an hour before approaching the staff himself, after we had mostly finished eating. He was told that the ticket printing machine wasn’t working and his order hadn’t printed. The staff then came a few moments later and informed that he had to order something else instead of the tacos due to having run out of almost all the ingredients (except for mushrooms). This felt unreasonable since we felt the long wait may have meant the ingredients ran out in the meantime. Fortunately his tacos did arrive during this discussion, but this left two of us querying about our additional taco orders we had just placed moments ago (anticipating an equally long wait).

We asked the waitress about this, who advised we also needed to order something else since the restaurant did not expect the 400 people booking on one night- which we found puzzling since presumably the 400 bookings would have been made gradually in advance and this could have been somewhat better planned for. This comment started to make sense as to why some people on our table who were served first had whole pieces of battered barramundi for one taco, while some of us had ordered two barramundi tacos each- but the pieces were BROKEN IN HALF AND SPLIT INTO TWO TACOS (see photo) which for obvious reasons was disappointing.

We requested refunds for our additional orders as we came here for the taco deal. Since our drinks had arrived between the time the waitress returned to refund us, she handed us cash (a card refund would have been preferred) for the tacos we had ordered but did not refund the drinks since “they had already been delivered to the table”.

This was completely unreasonable since we had requested a refund and it was not in our hands that drinks were delivered after our refund request. The two of us didn’t want the second drink but ordered it for the $1 taco deal. Before leaving, one other went to the bathroom where she had to jump from cubicle to cubicle - there was no toilet paper in five of the six cubicles.

Typically we are quite understanding of a few errors or mishaps here and there, but tonight felt quite disappointing with numerous negative events. There was no attempt to compensate for the long wait time, and the food portions being reduced among other things.

This was a feeling shared among many of us and sadly we do not feel we would be recommending this to our friends if this is the normal way things are run at this venue. I do not typically leave reviews, but I hope that this feedback will be helpful in improving your business and the customer experience in the future, especially with bigger events advertised...

How to turn a no, into a yes.

First, if you don't like loud spaces do not come here on a Saturday or probably a weekend. Mid week is better. But if you don't mind the loud then the place has a lively atmosphere.

Family of four, celebrating my brothers birthday. Night didn't start out great as the food arrived sporadically. There was a 10 minute wait between the first meal (which was missing guac) and the next two meals then another 15 minutes wait for the last meal, with which the quac missing from the first meal was finally delivered. All restaurants /kitchens should know that meals should always come out at the same time. patrons would always prefer to wait a little longer for the meals to arrive at the same time (or within a couple mins of each other) than wait. Please fix this. Even being short staffed on the night, the sporadic delivery of food should not have occurred. It's not hard to time meals to come out simultaneously for a whole table of 4pax.

Food: the fajitas were okay (though I've had better) and for the price I would expect more sour cream, cheese and Pico de gallo (a small bowl consisting of 1 tablespoon of each is not sufficient). The burrito bowl leaves much to be desired. Lacked flavour. I've had better at GYG and Mad Mex.

However, on the verge of riding this place off and giving it a 1 star review, the manager Denny, redeemed the restaurant by his sincere apologies when we expressed our concerns and provided us with a round of free drinks and a surprise round of birthday shots! We were very happy by the end of the night. Thank you Denny. Also, when the staff brought out the birthday cake we had brought, they had also added a sparkler which was delightful.

So ultimately whilst the food could be improved, the overall service was good from the wait staff and managment. Drinks were also were satisfactory.

Other things for management to note: Get rid of the tacky music videos on the screens. Just have abstract videos or rolling advertisements for your weekly specials. Some of the music videos are vulgar and if kids were attending it wouldn't be appropriate. Also they don't even match the music most of the time.

Also we were sitting in the alcove to the right of the entrance, with the terracotta brick wall with the triangular holes in it. Board/seal the wall up so cold air isn't coming through as in winter, like tonight, the cold air doesn't make for a nice...

Possibly one of the worst dining experiences I've ever had.

We arrived at 8:35 pm for our 8:30 pm booking, while waiting for approx. 5mins or so to talk to the staff. When we were finally approached after being first in line, we were asked to wait at the bar while our table is prepared. After about 5-10mins we confirmed with the staff to make sure we weren't forgotten about and they said "Sorry for the delay, we're still waiting for a table". After this we noticed people coming in after us being seated with larger groups, groups exiting the venue and tables being made up, but we were still sitting at the bar waiting to be seated for our booked table well after our booked time. Our booking was also a 2hr all you can eat and drink booking for $89pp and we were stuck at the bar unable to even order drinks unless we wanted to pay extra. Staff seemed to start avoiding us as we continued to wait and try and talk to a staff member to see if there was some issue and what was causing the delay. After about 35 minutes, no joke maybe even more, we decided to leave as they had no desire to accommodate us or our booking. During this time countless people were being seated at tables. I can only assume that due to the demand, they were happy to seat people that didn't take advantage of the all-you-can-eat/drink deal to make more money from their limited capacity, which considering we had a booking confirmed is honestly just disgusting service and business practice by El Camino. We understood that it was an extremely busy night and there was possibly limited staff, but having entered at around 8:35 pm with a booking made and confirmed by the venue, to only be left to wait until around 9:10 pm at which point we simply gave up as we were being ignored, is disgusting behavior and caused us to pretty much miss our dinner and ruin our entire evening plans; resorting us to fast food takeaway at such a late time.

Good to know that making a booking means nothing for these people,...