Santa Rita Cantina — Restaurant in Austin

TL;DR: overpriced shrimp tacos smelled like rancid fish, came out cold after waiting over 1 hour for some migas and tacos. There’s a reason this place looked vacant on a Saturday for lunch.

We stopped here on a whim for a late brunch. We were seated and got our food and drink orders in fast. The $3 mimosa special was hard to pass up. After we got our mimosas and coffee, we settled in to wait for our meal to arrive...and waited...and waited...until I noticed a family of six that were seated after us had just gotten their food! The next time our waitress came by I asked if our food was almost ready and she said it’d be out shortly. We ordered the shrimp tacos and chorizo migas with black beans. Suddenly I notice a strong, fishy smell from across the room. I look over at a couple with their small child and saw they called our waitress over. They look like they’re having a conversation about a plate and I see the wife transfer what looks like shrimp to a small bowl and hands it to the waitress who proceeds to carry it back to the kitchen. Interesting. About 20 minutes later our waitress comes by our table and says the kitchen is out of chorizo. We had already been waiting 40 min at this point. She told me we would get a second round of mimosas on the house and left to the kitchen. At this point, the mimosas were the best item in the menu to us. Who knew they’d be the only enjoyable part of our meal. (I’ll get to that in a second.) She comes back two minutes later and asks what kind of migas I want because she forgot to ask before. I told her regular migas would be fine. Short time later, she comes out with the shrimp tacos and migas. The migas were warm. My partner’s shrimp tacos, on the other hand, were cold, the corn tortillas flimsy and the shrimp—you guessed it—smelled RANK. Tasted mealy too. We quickly asked for the check, downed our free mimosas, and got out of there. If our waitress and the kitchen staff talked to each other earlier about the chorizo being out, my partner and I both could have come out with hot meals. If Kitchen Nightmares was still around, I’d definitely recommend this restaurant as one for Mr....

The place wasn't busy, but the hostess seated us (a 50-something couple) right next to a table of very loud, very fat women who made so much noise, my wife and I couldn't talk to each other. It was at least 10 minutes later when a guy came by to say that chips and salsa were on the way. Most of the staff wears T-shirts saying "Mas cheeps?" but this is evidently a taunt. We were unable to secure mas cheeps for the rest of our lengthy stay. Service was almost non-existant. Eventually someone took our order and eventually someone else brought food. We would normally have had a second margarita, but never had a chance to order it. I like to eat my beans by scooping them up with cheeps, but there was no one around to extract mas cheeps from. We were completely ignored the whole time. We sat there for 15 minutes with empty plates and glasses, and finally got our check. There's no way that "server" could have been unaware of our impatience, and yet found something else to do before running my credit card and getting it back to me. As many reviews have said, this place has the worst service possible. There really is nothing they could do to make it worse. This is probably a symptom of having a captive clientele in the surrounding medical buildings. The lack of care is evident all throughout the building. Tables are not level and the menus are in plastic so old that it's yellowed and cracked. If the manager can't be bothered to walk around with a cresent wrench and a screw driver and fix a few things, then he's not going to bother about little annoyances like...

Well, what could I possibly note except the food is terrible. The Tex Mex plate...not even close to Tex Mex. I have had better in a hole in the wall joint in San Antobio. A complete total waste of time and money. I understand wanting to present food that looks great. However, you are trying too hard to make something better but your food lacks authenticity. Mexican food is not a difficult process and really not hard to prepare. You should try a Mexican Chef or even a cook. Such a beautiful place to have a cook ruin your business. The Manager is wonderful but the waitress didn't seem to enjoy her job. After our food was finally served she became absent. She never asked if we needed anything...like napkins or salsa. Also, we were served the crispy Taco as if it were an appetizer and waited for over 10 minutes to be served the rest of our order. You're trying too hard to impress your customers rather than serving excellent food that is authentic. Too pricy for the quality of food and service. The manager did reduce the amount on our ticket but that didn't make up for a horrible dining experience. Maybe Austin but never in...