San Joe’s Cantina Grill — Restaurant in Albany

Great food, great staff, great atmosphere!! My husband and I love everything about this place! Our server, Liz, was very nice and attentive. Everyone was friendly and helpful. We will definitely be going here again soon .

Update We have not found many places in Albany that make us feel like returning multiple times. San Joe's was one we did enjoy, until last night. It was our third visit and it completely reversed the good review I left above. I suppose the quality of service really depends on who your server is. We came in for dinner and as usual it was not too busy. We were seated almost right away. The server asked if we wanted a table and we told her yes. I explained that I am unable to sit at a booth. She first tries to seat us at a booth. 🤦‍♀️ When I tell her again, she takes us to a wobbly table in the back (the only other option she gave us was the bar). My husband wound up fixing the wobble by putting a napkin under one of the table legs. Our server soon brought out chips and salsa, took our drink orders, and after she brought the drinks she didn't come by again for quite some time. There was one table with several men she fawned over the entire time. They were there before we arrived, and were still there after we left. She finally took our order, which took forever to be served. In the meantime she poked her head out of the kitchen once to ask if everything was ok. With chips, salsa, and drinks? Uh, sure. When we finally got our meals the guacamole and sour cream I asked for on the side were dumped on my tacos. No biggie, I was going to put it on them anyway, but maybe not as much. The tacos were mostly guac and sour cream with some shrimp. The food was good, so I give high praise to the cook. After she brought the food, we didn't hear from her again until we were almost finished. She asked me if I wanted another drink, but didn't ask my husband if he needed a refill. By that point it was too late anyway. We asked for our bill, which seemed a little high, but we just wanted to pay and get out of there. They say the third time is a charm, but unfortunately in this case our third time here ruined...

READ THIS AND TAKE WARNING**

Arrived at 6:30pm on a Saturday evening.....new restaurant and a Saturday night.....fully expected to have a long wait. 7:45 rolls around and we're finally walked over to a table that hadn't been cleaned yet. Finally they cleaned the table off and we were seated. Then we waited for someone...anyone to come take our order....chips and salsa are brought to the table (which I noticed one of the salsa things was half used so they may be reusing salsa). Our drink orders were taken another 20 minutes later....then everything somehow got worse.

Food was ordered when the drinks eventually came out. Drinks were missing, or forgotten completely, or in the case of two alcoholic drinks they were missing ingredients......COMMON ingredients. The tea was either unsweetened or then sweet but it had a chocolate taste as was intimately replaced with a pepsi.....which was flat. Then some waters were ordered and the glasses were dirty and had something floating around in it.

Now flash forward to 9:15pm.....food still hasn't arrived after an hour wait. 9:30 food is brought out and is cold, missing ingredients, or generally just unacceptable.

Let me break this down:

Ordered a grilled chicken/cheese quesadilla it arrived with no cheese.

Ordered a Texas style Williams special and it arrived without the shrimp and was cold.

Ordered two taqueria style tacos which were cold.

Ordered a kids quesadilla meal.....arrived with no rice, cold beans and my daughter took one bite of the quesadilla and said it was bad and wouldn't eat it.

The ONLY positive note is that the table side guacamole is fantastic, the server who prepared it was excellent, knowledgeable and honestly deserves a pat on the back for making some damn good Guac.

My family and I will NOT be back. It's sad when Taco Bell provides a better experience.

My recommendation is that the owners lay out some structure, take a breath and get their business under control. YOU HAVE SO MUCH POTENTIAL!! This is the worst mexican food in Albany right now....We expected...

1 hour wait, did not get the food we ordered, basically told to go (not literally but implied) and then being accused of dine and dash (in other words).

Been here less than a handful of times and never any issues but today was different.

Decided to go there today for lunch and after sitting there for 1 hour the waitress came by and said that the kitchen was backed up today because of high traffic of people there (father's day) and that they had already messed up other people's orders which made them backed up even more and that she did know how much longer we would have to wait there for what we had ordered.

I just said: well that is disappointing but please just bring me the bill for the drinks we had and please bring more chips while we wait for you to bring our check..

We got the bill, paid and even left a 10% tip (I normally do 20% or more and when the total is a small amount I may tip more % wise.

As we were walking towards the car, a hostess came out running from inside saying we did not pay for the drinks and that we needed to pay for them (but we did pay)

I told her we had already paid and even left a tip, but it was embarrassing to have someone run after you saying you did not pay when in fact I did pay for the beer, margarita and two fountain drinks.

Yes, it was my decision to pay and leave in a very nice way, never made a fuss but the waitress made it feel like the best we could do was leave, we paid and left but the worst part was at the end being accused of skipping the check..

Good thing there was no one outside because it would have been embarrassing being told that in front of other people.. There were people waiting there so they probably saw her running out to catch us like if we left without paying when we did not.

Super bad experience...