Juanita's Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Altoona

Disappointing Experience at This Overhyped Mexican Spot – Not Worth the Hype or Price

I was on a business trip and staying at a really nice hotel nearby, so I decided to check out this Mexican restaurant just down the street with a group of colleagues. What a letdown. The food quality was basic at best – nothing special or authentic that stood out. But the real issue was the portions: they were ridiculously small for the prices we paid, leaving us all feeling ripped off and still hungry. It was kind of disappointing on every level, especially since I'm no stranger to the service industry (I come from restaurants and bars, and I'm a manager at a large corporation, so I get how things work behind the scenes).

Service was probably one of the worst I've encountered in a very long time. Our waitress wasn't friendly at all – when we'd ask questions, she'd give vague, half-hearted responses that didn't help. We were a table of four, and when we handed over our credit cards to pay (since we were in a group), she clearly didn't know whose card was whose, which added unnecessary confusion and awkwardness. Then, when I asked for some salsa, it took a full 25 minutes to bring it out – we're at a Mexican restaurant, for crying out loud! And don't get me started on the sauces: they normally have that ranchero sauce or green sauce, but what they gave us was barely enough to put on two chips for the entire table. Pathetic.

This place seems like a basic cash grab targeting all the corporate people staying in the nearby hotels. You're way better off skipping it and heading to a food truck down the road for something more satisfying and value-packed. The only redeeming factor was the ambience – it was pretty nice just because the place inside a strip mall. But that doesn't make up for the subpar food, tiny portions, and terrible service. Save your money and time;...

Service was great, the staff was responsive and could answer questions. The atmosphere felt good, per my preferences the music inside was too loud and it was hard to have a conversation without speaking very loudly. Decor was great, just what you would expect.

The food was not to my liking, others may enjoy it. The guacamole was heavy on the salsa side. It was $8 and most of it is pico de gallo. The queso dip was uninspiring, something I would expect at a movie theatre in one of those prepackaged cups.

We tried the carne asada plate, hoping we could find a place here with decent carne asada. This was an epic fail. I could not even tell if it was set in a marinade, it was bland and the meat was tough. The tortilla was overly salty, good, but salty. Rice and beans were decent. Nice fluff rice, which I appreciated and it had good flavor. The beans did not stand out, bland and needing some flair to stand out as something you can only get at the restaurant.

The salsa and chips were on the better side. Chips were done perfectly and we kept going back to them. The problem was that the salsa had way too much cilantro in it. I like cilantro in menudo and pezole, so I am a fan, but even I was surprised by how it overwhelmed the salsa. Perhaps just a bad prep that day.

I think we missed out on by not trying the fajitas, so we may go back again, but will be trying new things, as these particular dishes did not work for us.

Again this is our tastes, people have different tastes, so if you like it that way, then awesome. The service and atmosphere...

Let me start off by saying this was our favorite restaurant in all of Eau claire. We went here pretty regularly. On Monday July 1st around 7:10pm we went here after a movie. We ordered our food and drinks. When the guy came out with the drinks he split a bit of the drinks because he was caring four in his two hands and didn’t clean it up. He went into the kitchen and came back out. We realized we were short on utensils, so we mentioned it to him. He grabbed some utensils from a table next to us, and we thanked him. When my boyfriend unrolled the napkin from the utensils he noticed there was blood on the napkin and it wasn’t just one tiny spot. He looked all over his hands and arms and didn’t have any cuts. I then noticed where the waiter set the utensils down originally there was a small line/pile of blood, so it had to be relatively fresh since it had transferred from the table. We had decided to leave since we did not know who this came from and if said person would be handling our food. We mentioned the blood to the waiter and had asked if he would like us to pay for our drinks and he said no and that he can move us to a different table which we just declined and told him we were going to go. I understand incident happen but we were uneasy not knowing if the injured person would be handling our food. Like i mentioned prior, besides usually understaffed or a little slow, the food here is very good. And it was our...