Pancheros Mexican Grill - Ames — Restaurant in Ames

To put it gently, Pancheros as a franchise might be better off if this location closed. To put it less gently, the kindest thing I have to say about this location is that their food has never made me physically ill.

This location has been consistently bad for years. The restaurant is frequently untidy; tables left uncleaned, overflowing trash, dirty floors. The prep area and grills are frequently dirty, with loose ingredients everywhere and shards of tortilla and ingredient cross-contamination in the pans. I could understand that during a rush, but when you're the only customer in the restaurant and 2 or 3 employees are just standing around and talking, that level of uncleanliness is less easy to rationalize.

Part of Pancheros' whole thing is mixing the ingredients, but you're very lucky if they do that here. If you order delivery, prepare for at least one ingredient to be left out. Service is invariably slow, even when there are a half dozen people behind the counter loudly talking to each other and you're the only customer there the entire time. I've seen employees talking on their phones while serving customers. And the workers pretty much just ignore you. I've unhappily worked service jobs before, so I don't want to harp on this part too much, but it'd be nice if the workers could at least say a hello or look at you or acknowledge your presence or communicate with you in any way.

And on top of that, the food here just tastes bad. I know is not a problem inherent to the chain because other locations are perfectly fine. No other location I've been to has had their standards this low. Having grown up where the chain was founded and genuinely loving their food, I've been to a lot of locations, and the state of the Ames Panch is really, really sad compared to what I know the chain is capable of.

So, to summarize, food tastes bad, cleanliness is bad, service is bad. I'm going to stop eating here to preserve what little love for the chain's food I have left, and advise anyone reading this to...

Everytime I have eaten here the food has been alright I don't like the tofu, but that's my preference. Sometimes the salsa is hot and I get that. Sometimes I make food at home too spicy and have to redo. The only difference is I am not a company selling it to consumers. Understanding humans are not perfect why complain about things when they don't go your way? I see too many comments here complaining about what they did wrong, but nothing about what they've done right. If you don't like the food or customer service than eat somewhere else. As a regular customer it saddens me to see such volgurness come from this community. I've seen people come in while i was ordering and start yelling at the cashier or people spilling soda on the floor and not cleaning it and an employee is getting chewed out because a college student was inconsiderate. Take care of your community and it will do the same in turn. Your negative reviews are a means to getting free food or reembursment Sometimes a last word. You guys are doing great here and I'd love to keep eating...

A group of us ordered online and spent over $70.00. I went and picked up the order and brought it back to work, and right away my coworkers new it was not enough food. When we called and asked where are food was, Pancheros manager said “we don’t have carnitas”. The manager then said “the Door Dash driver was supposed to call”. Funny thing, I’m not a Door Dash driver, we ordered online for pickup. Then they said there was no phone number, the phone number was on the receipt (blacked out in the picture). The manager said to write down what we missed. In the picture you can see what they missed. When I went back to Pancheros, I handed them the list of food they forgot to make, and I asked “so, you charged us full price then did not send all the food”. The manager said “We were confused and it was crazy”. They messed up the order with me standing right there and when I went over to help them read the ingredients to each dish, I noticed they had carnitas 🙄 I will never order from the Ames...