Emilio's Tacos and Tequila — Restaurant in Atlanta

I usually do not leave reviews. However, a recent experience I had at Emilio’s was one of the worst I’ve encountered and left me completely flabbergasted by the treatment my party & I endured. I’ve visited this establishment once before and was impressed by the food. I will say, this is a new restaurant and the servers weren’t fully educated on the menu so that was slightly frustrating during my first visit. Nonetheless, I suggested this establishment to a group of my girlfriends for a Friday night dinner. We had a reservation and were excited to congregate after the long work week. The restaurant was much busier this time around opposed to my first visit. Our server was nice and did her best given the circumstances. She informed us she was fairly new upfront and we bared with her. As I am in the middle of placing my order an unidentified man grabs my server by her arm to turn her around and discuss a matter with her in front of our table. When she’s released back to us we asked “who was that?” And she responds by sharing that he was her manager. Blew my mind as he did not acknowledge us or apologize for the rude interruption. Clearly the matter he pulled her away to discuss was not an urgent one as she proceeded to take the rest of our orders. As the night proceeds, we are in the process of check out and the POS system crashes. 4/6 of us had already completed their payment. We were told to hang tight while they figure out the system issue. 25-30 mins go by and we have not received any type of update at this point. We’ve already been at the restaurant for a couple of hours at this and ready to go! Growing anxious, one of my friends makes an attempt to find management and our server to see if there’s anything they need from us to move the check out process along. Instead of a resolution she was greeted with hostility and extreme unprofessionalism from the manager on duty that night, Danny. Same guy who rudely pulled our server away mid order. Danny proceeded to explain to my friend that he was planning to fire our server in the back moments later. Taken aback by his behavior and statements my friend felt the safest move was to remove herself from the conversation and head back to our table. Danny proceeded to holler her name across the restaurant. Mind you, it’s a buzzing Friday night with margaritas flowing so the restaurant is quite loud. I couldn’t even see him but I definitely heard her name being yelled across the restaurant. We all looked around in disbelief wondering who would be calling our friend’s name like that. Our server eventually comes back to our table and apologized for the terrible treatment we endured from management. She was not our problem. Danny was our problem. It’s unfortunate because I would have loved to continue to visit this restaurant and bring new customers in however, I am completely turned off by management & the lack of accountability. I hope Emilio’s recognizes this review and does something to rectify the situation. Upon looking at other reviews it seems that a few others have had bad experiences with management here as well. I want better...

I visited this establishment with a few girlfriends on 3/21 and I wish I could say I had a great experience, but unfortunately it was the complete opposite. The atmosphere was great, our server Tamia was good (it was her 2nd week there so for her being new she did a good job), the food was decent, but what made the experience so bad was the restaurant manager, Danny. He was rude, aggressive, and disrespectful to our server and one of my friends in our party. First off, our server was speaking to one of my friends about her order and all of the sudden Danny comes over and in an angry tone says to Tamia, “WHERE’S TABLE 52?!” or something along the lines of that completely disrupting the conversation she was having with my friend. That right there was off putting because why are you speaking to your employee like that for one and for two in front of patrons?? Not a good look at all but that wasn’t the worst of it. When we were wrapping up and trying to check out, a technical issue was happening with the card reader that our server couldn’t figure out so she went down to the manager, Danny, to get help with it. Well that took a long time, I’d say about 20 min went by with no communication about what was going on so we all started to get a little antsy because we were ready to go. One of my friends was pregnant and tired and she just wanted to hurry up and get home. So my friend, Courtney, went down to where our server and Danny were to see what was going on and to ask if there was anything they could do in regards to compensation for the long wait. To her surprise was met with yelling and attitude by Danny. He told her in a very loud aggressive tone that he was going to do nothing in regards to billing and proceeded to put all the blame on our server. Courtney informed him that it was not our server’s fault and that she did great, but despite of that he continued to berate our server to my friend, even going as far as to say that he would fire her. Very unprofessional on his part. BUT it gets EVEN WORSE. When he gets in Courtney’s face, she decides to end the conversation there and turns to walk away… as she walks up the steps making her way back to us we all here this loud voice yelling “COURTNEY!” Like a parent talking to his child. Danny screams her name loud as hell in the restaurant for everyone to hear. Who does that? Emilio’s is a decent restaurant, but I’m telling you as long as Danny is the manager it won’t go far. My friends and I nor Tamia deserved the way he treated us and there is no way we would ever go back while he’s the manager. I hope you guys take this review seriously and something is done to bring justice to this situation because it was...

Before I begin my review, I would like to state that I am a former hostess & I am familiar with the restaurant business.

We visited this restaurant during their Cinco de Mayo celebration, so we knew it would be a busy occasion. This was our first time visiting the establishment.

We walked in, & stood in front of the hostess stand. We stared at the hostesses as they giggled at their phones for more than a minute, until someone who appeared to be management showed up and made a comment to them. We were seated in a timely manner after that.

Everything was great until we received our drinks & food items.

I ordered a michelada, & it seemed as if a pipette was utilized to drop the mix into the beer. As a Mexican, micheladas are typically RED in appearance. The bottle of Dos XX was inverted into the glass, which caused the drink to spill out of the glass when removed. I had to ask our server for extra michelada mix, for which she had to check with the bartender if it was okay to do so.

Our food arrived shortly after, & to our dismay, appeared subpar. Let’s not forget my partner & I are of Mexican heritage, so there is somewhat of an expectation when we visit “Mexican” restaurants. The quesadilla de tinga was great! No complaints there. However the tacos were lackluster. My partner ordered chicken and birria tacos, while I ordered asada & carnitas. His tacos came accompanied by consomé, while mine were as dry as the Sonoran desert. The server stated all they had was Cholula and some other generic hot sauce. For a second I was confused and thought I was at IHOP. She then stated they had a house salsa but it wasn’t spicy. Let’s note that she never stated it was an additional price. I decided to pass on this.

My partner noticed I was very dissatisfied with my tacos, & it appeared that it was difficult to swallow my food. He flagged a food runner & asked for house salsa. The courteous food runner brought us salsa verde & roja. This significantly elevated the taste of the tacos, but not $5.75 (how much a SINGLE chicken/carnitas taco is) worth of.

We finished our food & drinks, & then asked for the bill. Upon receiving the bill, we noticed a charge for chips & salsa. When we asked the server, she stated the salsas aren’t free. I made a comment about the tacos being dry, & she shrugged her shoulders. As a former restaurant employee, I understand extras can incur a fee. However, why did we not receive chips when we asked for salsa?

Ultimately the service & food quality were subpar to say the least. Our tab was $100, & we were charged a 3% credit card fee when paying. If you are a Mexican-American in Midtown, I recommend...