Taco John's — Restaurant in Bellevue

My boyfriend and I are driving to Mn and one of the things we were looking forward to was stopping at Taco John’s on the way, as we don’t have one within 45 minutes of where we live. We’ve had HORRIBLE experiences with this Bellevue location (missing items from our order, wrong items, poorly slapped together good quality, never any access to enter the lobby since 2020) every single time we’ve been here. We even discussed driving an hour further ahead to go to the Wittenberg location just to avoid this one, but we decided to give this place one last chance as we were held up in traffic due to a bad accident just before Green Bay, and we were really hungry.

The joke is on us!

First when we arrived, we decided to go into the lobby as we had been on the road for over a hour, and wanted to use the bathroom. Nope, the lobby is STILL closed since 2020, and it’s a Friday night. So we decided to go through the drive thru.

My Chicken Grilled Burrito was 3 inches long!! I wear size XS gloves and will upload a picture of what our burritos looked like. Not only that, but the inside of my burrito was almost entirely empty with two sad little pieces of chicken!! TWO!!!!! We had already made it onto HWY 29 and driven away for about 5 miles towards MN when we noticed the pathetic quality of our food. There is no way we are turning around now when we have a 6 hour drive ahead of us. We paid $19.90 for 2 chicken grilled burritos, a large potato ole, and 2 waters, which added up to essentially 4 bites of food. In addition, we only received about 5 SMALL Jalapeño slices in our side cup of jalapeños, and our potato oles were not seasoned at all! Come on! What is wrong with this location where there isn’t any effort about quality, clearly quantity, and its customers for at least 4 years straight!? How are they even still in business!?! We are never going to this location again. I just can’t even believe it.

Update* We went to the Wittenberg location right after this since we were obviously still hungry. I got the exact same burrito, and I took a photo for comparison. It will be the last photo on this post. The difference is...

We moved to Green Bay a year ago, and we've visited this Taco John's location three times. I've always been a fan of Taco John's food, and even though it's a bit of a drive from our home compared to many other restaurants, it's still a nice occasional treat.

However, today marked the end of our patronage to this particular location. While enjoying lunch with my children, my son suddenly chuckled nervously and pointed at the last remaining triangle of his chicken quesadilla. To our surprise, there was a black bug embedded in it. I promptly brought this discovery to the attention of the staff member who had taken our order. Soon after, he returned with a small card, which he handed to my son. It turned out to be a voucher for a free combo meal.

I thanked him and insisted that he didn't need to provide compensation; our only intention was to bring the issue to their attention in case more bugs were present in that batch. The worker nonchalantly replied that they couldn't do much about it because there was bugs in all the food. I couldn't hide my revulsion and felt on the verge of vomiting all the food I had consumed.

We immediately left the establishment, bidding the crew a polite farewell. The worker could have kept that free combo card because that incident marked the last time we will ever dine there. It was nothing short of a repulsive experience....

We love Taco Johns and deliberately go there to avoid the the big chains and support local business. I wish there was a way to know the ingredients when looking at the drive through menu to avoid allergens. I have said the magic words "no dairy" at other restaurants/places - only to find out the hard way that the person who took the order did not know what a dairy product was. So I usually say no cheese on anything please. Cheese is a typical ingredient in fast food. I did not see sour cream on the picture, it was not listed that I saw, but we had to throw away our order at home because of sour cream. Most people who ask for no cheese - on anything - are doing it for a good reason. If people are aware of what a dairy product is, it would click - maybe this customer is avoiding dairy.... Should I ask, to help the person out, in case they do not know there is sour cream in our burritos? I would not want someone to get sick eating it without realizing. It is a kind thing to do. So to avoid demonstrating that you know what a dairy product is by harshly schooling the customer that they should have said "no dairy" , take that extra small step and offer the information. This only happened there once and all other experiences were just fine, people as kind as could be. But this time it made...