El Rancho Restaurant, Pinetop — Restaurant in Arizona

3/15/23 UPDATE My food (chile relleno) was good. The beans and rice didn't seem fresh so even though I paid for it I didn't eat it. Four meals out of a party of seven had issues and NOT with the food itself but what the server taking the food order wrong. We all put in our order at the same time but the food came out in pairs. It took another 20 minutes from when the first couple of us got food until the last of us got our food. On top of that, any party of six or more (separate checks or not) has an AUTOMATIC 20% gratuity assessed and for kicks they show you how much more the gratuity would be if you would like to add another 7%, 10%, 15% etc ON TOP of the 20% THEN if you use a debit/credit card you are ALSO AUTOMATICALLY assessed another 4% fee. When we brought our check to pay up front and my husband told the owner that the service was sub par tonight there was no apology only excuses including we have new servers and short a cook in the kitchen and almost an annoyed dismissiveness. Again, no issue with the food itself. The waitress wrote down every single food order so I don't think I can attribute any of our problems tonight to those two excuses besides the gap of time when we all got our food. Keep in mind this is a Wednesday night.... not even a weekend. I removed my first review of El Rancho after it was horrible and the August trip was better but there clearly needs to be a history of the ups and downs because we've had more bad trips than good. The only thing that keeps us coming back occasionally is the food.... not the service or the extra fees or management deferring blame.

8/3/2022 Updated review The service was very organized today. It was much better than previous times I've eaten here. I think they must have made some organizational changes for the better because there was an obvious positive difference. The food was delicious as always. We all had clean plates by the...

Good service but this is NOT Mexican food. If you are from back east where there is no real Mexican food and you might like this place or if you prefer really bland food but if you are from the southwest this is horrible. Because I've seen other reviews from the southwest giving it 4-5 stars I figured we would try this place out. Arizona bar and grill in Kiev Ukraine is more authentic and that's owned by a Canadian and I did eat there. Now to the food. The chips were actually pretty good but some were extremely over salted where you could scrape the salt off. The salsa is very mild with hints of cummin. the taco meat had no seasoning and tasted just like hamburger. Taco Bell is better for the meat. The taco shell was perfectly crispy but slightly too thin to hold together well. The cheese enchiladas had some cubed ?pork? which was fine but again lacking flavor. The sauce was fine but the enchiladas didn't have much cheese and they were supposed to be cheese enchiladas. The burro again had unseasoned meat. The cream cheese was decent but using taco bells meat inside would have made it better. By no means is taco Bell good Mexican food but since it's a chain that everyone can identify the flavor is why I reference them. The salad was a poor excuse of a salad at best. It's like taking the shredded lettuce, tomatoes and cheese from a taco bar and putting it on a plate. The hamburger was tolerable but Burger King is WAY better. The hamburger tasted like the cheap "Flanders" patties from Walmart. When you have a 9 y.o. boy who loves hambo say he doesn't like it you know there's a problem. We won't be coming back unless the food is actual Mexican food. Again, since there are quite a few mixed reviews the only probable cause I can think of is that recipes are not followed by one Chef versus another. We are on a Saturday night so hopefully the issue can...

Where to start,? My husband and I ordered a plate of chimichanga and a 2 steak tacos, let's say that my chimichanga looked like a cheese enchilada and the tortilla was not fried as it should be. Now my husband's tacos were not the greatest and the beans were to dry. Now for the drinks, I ordered a horchata and my husband ordered a margarita, let's say that both tasted horrible!! I saw the bartender have white buckets filled with some sort of yellow liquid sitting on the ground to realize that it was the refilled margarita mixture that they use to poor the main white bucket that is covered with a black cover, very tacky I must say.. and seeing how their so call margarita mixture just sit there made us feel disgusted understanding why the margarita tasted horribly. The horchata was disgusting it didn't taste nothing like it, I couldn't find anything to compare it with to let yall know what it would taste like. I would NOT recommend it here and would not come back again. Oh yea btw, their salsa needs...