Range Cafe Rio Grande — Restaurant in Albuquerque

Worst customer service ever! I am from El Paso and was on a trip a few months ago with my husband and we decided to stop here for breakfast. The actual restaurant itself was nice. I enjoyed my food but my husband wasn't too fond of his plate. Our server was what made this experience at the top of our list of worst dining experiences. He never introduced himself so we never got his name to make a real complaint towards him. When he came to our table he wanted to get straight to taking our order. He kept trying to rush us and seemed annoyed that we weren't instantly ready upon sitting down. Another server brought us our food and our server only came by once to give my husband a refill on water, which he LITERALLY only filled half way and he didn't even offer to fill mine. He brought us the check while we were still eating our food and he came back a minute later to pick up the empty check book. He brought it back and left it again and we just put it to the side while we kept eating. We finally paid and when it came down to the tip we put nothing on the receipt, because we tip cash it's better for the servers anyways (at least from personal experience). So I got up to go look at the store in the restaurant and when I came back to the table the waiter seemed to be following me and he showed my husband the receipt he had already signed and said that my husband needed to sign it. My husband looked at him and told him he obviously did sign the store copy. He was already thoroughly annoyed by this man and attitude. He asked how the food and service was and we just plainly said good as we didn't want to make it a big deal. At this point we just wanted to leave but this server was practically blocking us into the booth. He then pointed to the empty tip and said "guess it wasn't good enough" and practically ran away like a child. We still had given this man a cash tip on the table which he clearly did not deserve it. I noted also that his other tables were all just as annoyed as us for the lack of service. We called and spoke to a manager some time after the trip and they said they would call us back...

I rarely go out to restaurants any more, but a friend offered to take me, so the two of us visited the Range Cafe. I ordered chicken fried steak, with a side of extra gravy.

The mashed potato and vegetables were delicious, but the chicken fried steak was badly cooked. The outside was black. The inside was barely cooked and was tough and full of gristle. It was obvious that the cook tried to make a quick job of it in grease that was WAY too hot. I imagine that he had some orders backed up, so instead of cooking it correctly, he tried to do it fast and hot, which is why the outside breading was blackened.

The waiter never brought the gravy that I ordered.

When I asked for Tabasco sauce, he brought me the bottle but I did not notice that they had taken the middle portion out of the neck of the bottle so that tabasco sauce just spilled onto my plate. When I pointed it out to him, he did not offer to replace it, even though it was the restaurant's fault. (I think they may have been using Tabasco sauce bottles to hold off- brand Tabasco sauce and had forgotten to put the middle plastic bit into the neck of the bottle after filling it. The plastic bit in the neck of the bottle is designed to prevent a flood of Tabasco sauce from ruining your meal I had to move the food away from the lake in the middle of my plate.

Later, when I asked for salt, the waiter never brought it - while my food got cold. I kept trying to flag him down, but he was the only server in the dining room, I think. Finally, I got my salt and finished my (now cold) meal of cold gristle swimming in Tabasco.

The two stars are for really good mashed potatoes...

I’ve eaten here many times without a problem but today was a nightmare experience (New untrained or terrible manager is my guess). My family of ten came in at about 10:23am for our Sunday brunch. We were quoted about 30 minutes which is fine and understandable considering the shuffling of tables that normally happens. Well today they did not want to arrange tables for us instead wanted us to wait for the one single table in the restaurant that can fit a large party as is which had just got sat with another party. They wanted to save the smaller tables for the 2-4 people families. Odd since they’ve always arranged in the past and there were lots of booths available for small party’s all around the restaurant 7-8 booths available. After multiple complaints from us as well as other parties this lady manager finally gave in to arrange some tables to sit us and another party. We were finally sat at 11:41. The server was outstanding and admitted to us that he actually had no idea we were added to his work load of 4 other tables. Once that was sorted we placed our order which was brought out to us about 12:25pm. Lastly by the time we were finished and done it was about 1:15pm now just shy of 3 hours. No manager came to offer apologies but the server went and bought the situation up to the bar manager which decided to step in and handle since the lady was no where to be found since she got the original complaints.

Large party’s avoid at all costs unless you are ok with fighting for a table arrangement with a 3 hour long restaurant experience. Slow slow and 100 management...