El Chicos — Restaurant in London

I can't give a mark for the food as we left before it arrived. I have been to el chicos many times over the years and always had a good experience. However, things seem to have changed. The first red flag should have been that the restaurant was practically empty on fathers day. A time when most restaurants are full! Then we had to swap chairs as there was a big brown stain on a green chair, we almost swapped the table as it was damaged. There was also an unsightly hole in the wall, but still we decided to stay. We placed our order and 2 cokes came first. The cokes were flat. I told the bartender who said he would check the coke. 10 minutes later I went to see what was happening about the cokes, he said the coke was fine. I told him again that they were flat and he said he would taste it again and then repeated that it was fine. They were not fine, they were flat with just a little fizz, it's supposed to be fizzy. At that point I wasn't going to argue with him over coke, nor was I going to stay in a restaurant that wasn't going to treat me with decency, so my family and I left. We went to 'the bull' in streatham common which is a youngs pub & beer garden, it was lively, we had great food with fizzy coke and the service was second to none. It's a shame really because the bartender could have taken the cokes back and offered another drink if his coke comes with minimum fizz and he thinks that's fine. It wasn't him that was about to spend over £100 on food and drink so his opinion on whether it was flat or not, was redundant. Hopefully they learn a thing or 2 about customer service and customer...

I love Mexican food so was really excited to come here for the first time in September, before our trip to the cinema. The service was good and the restaurant fairly atmospheric but unfortunately and (I’m really sad to say) the main food was a bit of a disappointment. The cheese nachos arrived as a starter and were good. We waited a little while for our freshly made cocktails to arrive (A Mojito and Pina Colada) also very delicious…but my main dish of the special Chilli Con Carne bowl (supposedly infused with special spices and SOL beer) was just bog standard…nothing special as promised on the menu. It was perfectly edible but I couldn’t taste any special spices in the chilli, it just tasted like one you could buy anywhere. My hubby wasn’t the biggest fan of his Halloumi burger, he said it was ok but didn’t think it had anything that stood out about it either?

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the two female waitresses that were hovering around just staring as we came in either. When the one who served us told us she was new and it was her first week it kind of made sense but still sitting at the front of the restaurant, where I was trying to enjoy a quiet intimate meal with my husband it was a little disconcerting.

Such a shame we had high hopes for this place but sadly won’t be returning…

PS. Forgot to add the toilets aren’t labelled clearly and I suspect men have been using the woman’s lavatory…which needed a good clean! :( Perhaps instead of hovering around the waitresses could have sorted that out? I might have said something but was...

I really like to give my honest review although I feel bad if it’s not a super positive one but I look at reviews before I go and spend my money somewhere so I like to give people who are like me a bit of honesty. This is tex mex. I could go to sainsburys and get the fajita kit from those El Paso kits and make you the exact same thing as what they serve. I asked for the steak to be well done because I am pregnant and we’re not allowed to eat any form of medium / rare meat and this one had blood leaking & was just super rare. All three of us asked for it to be well done and were given rare. We then had to return it and the guy asked if we wanted fajitas instead, thankfully he asked as we were hoping for that but it took so long to get that when it arrived our hunger had disappeared. Service wasn’t really that good, but I get it. It was a busy night due to the £10 off discount. One guy who looked like a manager was quite rude actually but I mean, i know he was trying to just get through lol. I asked for water and I got it 25 minutes later only because the waiter saw me looking a little bit disappointed. I also asked the waitress if the tortillas were CORN (like the real ones they have in Mexico) and she said yes - but what was given to us was flour tortillas. I wouldn’t go there and pay those prices for the food they serve but the cocktails / mocktails were really nice so if there’s one positive note to leave on it’s that.

Also they replied to this review and I’ll say that THREE steaks were sent back, not...