EL CHARRO DANFORTH — Restaurant in Toronto

Visited this restaurant on a Friday night with my husband. Overall, food and bevs are delicious. Each dish is more than enough to share between 2 people and are worth the money you spend. However, the service is lacking. Hence the 3 stars. From the moment we walked in, the server had his back turned away from the door. So he didn't see us walk in; it took at least a couple minutes before another server pointed out to him that there were guests waiting to be seated. Throughout our stay (which was just under 1.5 hours), different servers just kept coming to our table and would just take our plates and utensils WITHOUT asking if we were finished and if they could take our plates and utensils away.

Items ordered:

Appetizers:

Agua Chile (Shrimp Ceviche) Shrimp cooked in lime juice, with red onions, avocado, cucumber, spicy green salsa and served with crispy tortillas. It was very tasty, refreshing and flavourful! Big portion, good to share between 2-3 people! We enjoyed it a lot!

There was also a complimentary basket of freshly prepared/cooked chips that came with 3 different dipping sauces, Chips were nice and crispy!

Mains:

Tacos De Birria Con Queso (Beef Birria Tacos) The taco itself was very flavourful! But the birria (stew used to dip the tacos) was pretty salty. The limes definitely helped balance the saltiness of the stew.

Birria Flautas (Deep Friday Crispy Tacos) Deep fried rolled up crispy tortillas, topped with lettuce, tomatoes, crema and cheese.

Drinks: Pina Colada was delicious! It was the perfect combination of sweet,...

I've been here a few times with my father. The food is unreal - delicious but expensive. And expect to wait a long time to get it. Unfortunately the same has to be said for the cocktails - delicious, but twice our drinks arrived with our appetizers dishes, 20+ mins after ordering it, and it wasn't busy in the restaurant. One might expect a faster delivery due to how expensive the drinks are.

The servers are friendly but lacking basic courtesies - apologizing for long wait times and visiting the tables regularly is not their strong suit - two rather basic serving skills to have.

Last I was there with my dad, our male server spilled water all over the table/myself, and did not even apologize or give us extra napkins to help clean up. I had to get them myself. This really spoiled what had been a pleasant experience and is deterring me to return until I hear that service has improved significantly.

The atmosphere in the restaurant is pleasant, but the bathrooms are horrendous. I used to go to this bar before it became El Charro and they clearly did very little to improve the disgusting washrooms which reek of mold, and the lock on one of the stalls wasn't working when I was last there - an annoying feature that still hasn't been fixed since it was Brass Taps!

The live entertainment is wonderful, the vocalists are excellent and very fun to watch.

Overall a great place for delicious food, but expect to stay an hour or two as you will be waiting a long time for beverages and food, and for your servers to...

Sadly cannot recommend this spot, as I did not have a pleasant experience.

My friend and I came here for dinner. I ordered a shrimp burrito, they ordered chicken tacos. We both also ordered Mexican Coca-Cola.

We ordered around 7:50 PM. We got our drinks right away, but after that our server did not check in on us for around 40 minutes. We sat there, waiting for our food, watching everyone around us get theirs. I could not even seem to get our server's attention.

Finally, around 8:40, I manage to get his attention. I asked him if our food was coming soon, as at this point it had been 50 minutes. He said it "should be coming out soon." At this point, I'm convinced he completely forgot to input our order.

After this, he would come to our table every few minutes to reassure us our food was "almost ready." At one point I got up to use the bathroom and he came up to me and said "It's ready, it's ready." Confused, I hesitated, unsure if I should still go to the washroom if our food was about to arrive. But I went, and when I came back, our food still wasn't there. And our food did not actually arrive for another 10 minutes after that. What was the point of lying and saying my food was ready if it wasn't?

In the end, I waited 70 minutes to get a burrito, something that definitely should not take that long to make. And the worst part? It was the blandest burrito I have ever tasted. Almost no sauce or seasoning. Served with a side of plain chips that desperately could have...