El Patio — Restaurant in Alachua

I was looking for good Mexican food and wasn't disappointed at the food! The servings were good and the taste was as well.

The thing this place is seriously lacking is service and attention to the customer.

Walked in NO ONE in sight. I look around I could see one person walking in the back kitchen area. No one on the floor or at the door so I started looking. Found I'm assuming the hostess in a booth close to the kitchen and got seated. Ordered drinks 2 tea and soda. Got the menu took time finding what to order. Got chips asked for a spicier salsa. This is however one place that doesn't serve tomato sauce w a little cilantro and call it salsa. We just wanted something a lil spicier. Ordered fajitas a molcajete which was great and tacos plain no cheese or lettuce. My son spilled his drink in accident finally got something to clean it up w napkins....but no one bothered to help with the wet floor or to bring another drink until asked. Dirty cup napkins etc left on the table. Never bothered to or worry about taking it away. Food comes and is yummy BUT my sons tacos were not right loaded w cheese and lettuce not plain and the order came one thing at a time and had to ask for our tortillas for the molcajete and fajitas 😡the tortillas were the easiest part of the meal. Didn't get checked back on for drinks etc except once. We had to basically hunt for service.

I asked the waitress who was at the bar doing something (cutting up stuff) for a refill on our drinks because they were empty. She was absent from the floor most of the time. Anyway she said ok and kept cutting away. 5 min. Later walks to the kitchen messes around in there for a while then comes out grabs a drink from the cooler and has a few gulps. 🤔🧐 Ummm can I please have more tea and drinks for my family? She gets an attitude tells me she was busy and then gets our drinks. Keep in mind no prebus not even the cup that spilled, my sons plate covered in cheese and lettuce because she didn't pay attention during ordering. Had to practically beg for togo containers and the check. Next had to wait to be checked out because the hostess/cashier was once again AWOL.

You have good food but the service is severely lacking which will end up affecting the bottom line. If they don't care about their customer I don't care to tip appropriate. I havent had service this substandard in a long time. If you need a front of the house part time day manager lmk.

Oh and the ramekin brought to put salsa...

We were at this restaurant for over an hour waiting for someone to give us our check to leave. We started by getting sat right away, then took 10 minutes for a waitress to come to our table and get our drinks. Then another 10 minutes goes by and we are just putting in our food order. This then takes about 30 minutes for it to come out, and we got our food with no silverwear, no chips for our queso, and empty drinks. The shift manager realizes that we haven't been attended to in awhile and helps us out. Our original waitress didn't attend to is for about 30 minutes. We were getting antsy because we wanted food boxes and our check. We tried to ask another waitress but she completely ignored us after us saying "ma'am, ma'am" and just walked away. The manager comes back to help us out again because the waitress isn't doing her job. My boyfriend then wants to tell her about our experience here and she tried to make up an excuse. She said "we don't like to overwhelm to kitchen staff with a bunch of orders at once". We weren't concerned about that, we wanted to know what the heck was going on with the servers AFTER we got our food. We were upset, the manager didn't want to listen, and did nothing for our bad experience. We used go to El Patio all the time, but the service is just so bad that we aren't ever going...

Of the three(food, service, atmosphere), The Algorithm leaves me only "Atmosphere" to describe what any human would call "Bar"

For the review, Google asks for rating overall and for food, service, and atmosphere?

So as soon as I sat down I was asked if I wanted chips and salsa. Yes, do you have spicy salsa? Yes *upon bill: There is nearly a $2 charge just for the spicy salsa

I ask about steak dishes as one comes with peppers and tortillas. Server replies "yes the tortillas are used for the rice and beans" I said I don't want that one and why. ... guess what I got... week old tortillas that couldn't even be unrolled and the server replies yeah thats what you ordered.

I payed for the salsa, the drinks, the steak. Got a $4 discount on the rice and beans. Thanks for the convenience?

A local at the "Atmosphere" mentioned the spicy salsa being inconsistent. To drive the point home: It was $2 for four tablespoons of spicy salsa. The unlimited chips and unquestioned carafe of salsa(that I was also served and thrown out) were FREE!

So as an atmosphere, no complaints. Pass! Note to manager: identify unique upcharge. Or just charge for the chips n salsa!...