El Gringos Locos — Restaurant in Sydney

I first attended this restaurant in November last year, the service, food and alcoholic beverages were amazing. We enjoyed our time so much that we told our closest friends and family members to attend the restaurant as it was overall an amazing place. Fast forward to the 17th of June this year, I had booked online a week prior for dinner. On the day of the booking I rang about 2 hours prior to find out if they had a dessert option that would hold a candle as it was my friends birthday an I forgot to buy a cake!! The lady on the phone said they don’t have cake options however they could put sparklers on ice cream, I asked if I needed to bring my own candles or if they provide to which she informed me to bring my own candles just in case. Finally my friend and I arrive for dinner, as usual greeted and seated by the waitress. When my friend went to the bathroom I called the waitress over and informed her about the birthday situation and handed her the candles in a sandwich bag. She asked me when I’d like for the ice cream with candles to come out to which I said when we’ve finished eating then. She took the candles and walked towards the kitchen area. We ordered our drinks and food. We had two classic margaritas, they did not resemble margaritas one bit which I was quite surprised by as I compared it to my last visit where the drinks were amazing. We had entree of jalapeño poppers which were still delicious and main was nachos, I noticed the meat on the nachos was not as warm as it really should be but we ate it anyway. We were slowly eating, an ordered another round of drinks. This time we ordered the passion fruit margaritas as the waitress had recommended these were her favourite (they aren’t on the menu). The passion fruit margaritas did not taste like passion fruit at all, it was a strange cordial flavour, it’s hard to explain but disappointing. We spent the rest of the time chatting away, no one cleared our tables until the manager of the store (man in coloured blazer) approached us and asked if we were finished to which we said with the food yes however we may order more drinks. He was nice but I thought he was coming to suss out if we were ready for the ice cream with candles… I was wrong. We sat there for 30 more minutes after our plates were cleared just slowly sipping our remainder drink and no sign of the ice cream or candles.. at this point it was awkward, the waitress was just attending to other duties and apparently completely forgot? My friend went to the bathroom I went to the front to pay and spoke to the girl at the counter about it, she said she was very sorry and unsure how this happened as she was the one who spoke to me on the phone about organising icecream and candles an that she’s not sure what happened as she personally went to the staff at the back and informed them of this. I told her I was disappointed and that if she has the time to inform the manager. It seems like such a minor thing but these days good food can be found everywhere, it’s the experience you pay for. An with the tasteless drinks, the almost cool meat and no ice cream with candles as well as not returning the candles, I won’t be attending this restaurant again. I told my friend afterwards about the whole birthday candles situation to which she just said “how embarrassing for the restaurant”.

Update:reply from management: Thank you for your prompt reply, I appreciate it. As I did make the booking online (with all my details) after such a mess up on your end I’m sure management could have contacted me to apologise and/or rectify the mess up somehow. Good attention to detail that you‘ve noted I commented 2 weeks post the experience, this is purely because I can’t come to terms how a restaurant can mess up a birthday dessert pre-organised when the restaurant was no where near capacity. This is constructive feedback from a customer who previously had an awesome experience, take it on board. Train staff to communicate better, enhance their knowledge on cocktail making skills, ensure you attract new consumers but also...

EDIT.. Guess who came back? 2 years later I found myself at your doorstep once again. I'm so impressed with the change! 1st this I noticed was obviously the new menu. I could see you took a lot of the unessarary items that were previously on there. . I opted for the wings, a chicken Taco, I was going tonget the burritto again, the waitress recommended the enchilada, so I thought I'd give it a go. Wings came 1st and they were cooked so well, nice and crispy and Juicy, I had 2 of each of the flavours. The BBQ was my favourite, everything was amazing. Night and day in comparison to when I came 2 years ago. I wish I came back sooner. Host informed me of the changes the owner made. 10/10 guys.

The decor when you walk in is very bright and happy, typical of a fun Mexican themed restaurant. It is not too busy for dinner time, though I believe that it is a new restaurant and it is Monday night, 4 tables including myself. Nice ambience in the place I was thrown off while ordering as was expecting traditional Mexican instead of Tex Mex. The menu is very large, 4 pages for food, entrees, mains ect.....2 pages for desserts and 6 I said 6 pages for drinks!!! The staff we nice and friendly enough, my waitress was very attentive, welcomed me with a bottle of cold water and a small bowl of flavoured popcorn. As I sit here I can help but feel that all this space it a waste for what is generally according to the menu, basically a take away shop. I cant imagine many people would come for tacos and burrittos to a restaurant and pay a premium when there are other cheaper and really good options. The food is going to have to be exceptional to warrant $25 for a burrito. At first glance, not too impressed, looks a little dry and boring. ive never had a toasted burritto before, unfortunately another cook that loves throwing away parsley. Chips are fresh thin cut it seems, has a very subtle favouring on it, not too bad. First bite, disappointing, no spiciness at all, that could be for the kids but I did opt for the spicy option requesting it be made as spicy as possible. Such a shame, I had high hopes but my $25 burritto is way overpriced for what it is. I really want to like it, its just really bland and boring lacking a lot of flavour. It should be bursting with fresh flavoursome goodness and its just not. Other places do a $15 burritto much superior to this. This place really could have a lot of potential if it were changed to a traditional Mexican restaurant which are scarce instead of a taco burritto and booze shop that are a dime a dozen right now. If I go to a Mexican restaurant I expect to see Pozole or Chiltomate even some tapas at the very least. They did have a seafood paella, that I was considering, though after the buritto quality, im glad I skipped it as it was substantially more expensive. I ate 1/4 of my burritto and left it at that. The staff were very apologetic asked if I would like to speak to the manager but I said its fine. For me 4/10 very unfortunate I really wanted this place to be great. Edit: I came back again tonight, I felt that I needed to give these guys another chance. I ordered a pork taco, and the chilli beef bowl. The taco was smaller than expected, like a slider taco, but it was quite nice the textures and flavours melded well together. My loaded fries, yes loaded fries. The waitress took my order wrong, but it was an easy mistake as we were talking about the beef chilli bowl and the loaded fries. So, the loaded fries, beautifully spiced beef but unfortunately hot saucy beef on top of thin cut fries after a few minutes turn to a beefy potato mush, not very appealing at all. I wish I could have eaten it. Unfortunately after a few bites while trying to navigate around all the potatos it just became a bowl of slop. Again, I really wanted to love this place. So much so I'm back the very next day. Unfortunately, what succeeded today over yesterday was over shadowed by tonight's service. I do wish you all the luck El Gringos Locos. Just some food for thought, I'd consider a complete overhaul...

Where do I even begin?

A group of 10, ordering the bottomless package ($85pp) at 7:30pm on a semi-busy Saturday night. 7:50 rolls around and we’re wondering why our cocktails and at the very least table water and bottled beer hadn’t arrived at our table.

8:15 table water arrives, our waitress is extremely apologetic as to why it’s taking so long. She then returns 15 minutes later with the bottled beer and proceeds to tell us that the bar staff are under the pump and that our cocktails are taking longer than expected. Meanwhile a table next to us who had arrived after us had been given their entree, and cocktails within about 15 minutes of their arrival. We were offered bottles of cheap wine to subdue us until our seemingly impossible to make cocktails would be served. We paid $85 each so we were hardly going to knock back the wine offered.

8:45 and after several complaints to the staff about were our food and margaritas were, we were issued with our entree.

It was 9:10pm before our mains arrived.. 9:10!!!!

The manager then came to pay us a visit and she agreed that the service we received was nothing short of abysmal - however proceeded to mention that our package would be revoked if we continued to drink the cheap wine so quickly. There were 7 of us drinking the wine out of champagne flutes, that’s why the wine was disappearing quickly.

9:25 and our first round cocktails arrived, and by this point the damage had been done.

We were assured by the manager that the package would restart when we got our cocktails but some of us had to leave due to work/family commitments the next day. I felt so bad for the lady whose birthday we were celebrating, your restaurant ruined her night.

There seems to be a common theme with your reviews that I now notice, the people who are younger that order the bottomless package are deliberately sabotaged so that we don’t become to intoxicated. However, you do realise that cheap wine in champagne flutes is more potent than tall margaritas are. I assume your RSA training would inform you of this but obviously not.

The other absolute icing on the cake moment was your waiter delivering the cocktails finally arrived at our table. He only brought 4 margaritas of the same flavour and the question was asked would the other margaritas that people ordered would be coming shortly to which he replied in a snarky tone “I don’t know, I only work here”. Yes, yes you do work there! You should have replied “I’m not too sure but I’ll just go and check for you.”

If I had one piece of advise for you, don’t offer the bottomless package anymore. You clearly cannot deliver...