El Ranchero Mexican Food & Margaritas — Restaurant in Claremont

The only reason this place is getting two stars instead of one is because the staff was very polite- however, they were terribly slow and not very attentive.

I came in with a party of 7. We were seated within 5 minutes, so there wasn't a terrible wait there, but we all ordered waters and that took another 5 minutes. It was a very hot day and so most of us finished our waters and were waiting for someone to come by, because they hadn't taken our food orders yet. After 10 minutes we flagged a waiter down and asked for more water (which still took a while to get), and told him we were ready to order. After ordering our food, we waited about 45 for our food to come out.

We all ordered a variety of burritos and one of us got the crab and avocado omelet. The burritos tasted okay. I got the Chile Verde burrito and the portions of rice, frijoles, sour cream and guacamole were generous, but the burrito was lacking in flavor in the meat. The seasoning was a little weak, and the meat tasted bland. I also tried the crab and avocado omelet, which was just not good at all. The crab was overcooked and chewy, and the egg overpowered a lot of the flavor.

I have a general rule of tipping 20% as long as my server hits all of the basic points (e.g. the basics of doing their job), checking up on us here and there, even if its looking at our table to see if we are looking for service, keeping an eye on our glasses to see if they need refilling, and being polite. If the food is going to take a while, I appreciate when someone can give me a heads up. The only reason I would tip any less is if the wait staff were SEVERELY lacking. My friends said I shouldn't have left a tip at all, but I'm a sap and know how much many servers depend on tips, so 8% it was, on a $90 tab. On two occasions we had to ask for more chips and salsa because we were hungry and waiting so long for our food. At one point, one of my friends raised his hand to ask for more water. This was after he had been trying to flag a nearby waiter who almost seemed to purposefully avoid looking at us.

All in all, the service was okay, the food was not that great. We definitely...

I am writing to express my extreme disappointment with the meal I had at your restaurant. I have never experienced Mexican food of such low quality.

The food was incredibly bland. The salsa was watery, consisting only of onion and a few pieces of tomato. We ordered guacamole, hoping for an improvement, but it was equally disappointing with a large chunk of onion, no tomato, and absolutely no flavor. We even tried mixing the salsa into the guacamole, but it didn't help.

My sister ordered the taquitos, and she was surprised by how flavorless they were. The "guacamole" served with them was green salsa, and there was no cheese, sour cream, or tomatoes. My steak and shrimp dish was also unseasoned; the shrimp appeared to have been boiled. The plate was overloaded with thick-cut, flavorless onions and bell peppers that overshadowed the rest of the meal.

Our service was also unsatisfactory. Despite the restaurant not being busy, our server seemed uninterested. We did not see him for the last 15 minutes of our meal and had to request our check from someone else, as we believe he went on break without informing anyone. To make matters worse, we were charged $15 for a margarita made with gin that I did not drink, as it was the worst I have ever tasted.

We chose your restaurant based on positive reviews, but our experience was a complete contrast. This establishment should not be advertised as a...

I called one of our favorite Mexican restaurants to order some food to pick up and when I got there they told me they never had the order. Turns out El ranchero had shown up at the top of my Google search so when I asked Google for The number, I ended up speaking to these guys. In fairness our situation was a little different, when we got there we asked if we could just sit down and eat they said they had already packaged the food we ordered so I paid $50 for a shrimp burrito and large bowl of soup. The burrito was acceptable but the albondigas was five meatballs in a bowl of mushy water. No flavor no real vegetables, angry wife. They had given us chips and salsa and my burrito came with guac so I offered the chips and guac to my wife but after one bite the tasteless guacamole didn't save my evening. The waitress that seated us had brought us water and was attentive but as it was late in the evening she disappeared pretty quickly. The staff let us know that the kitchen was closed so I wasn't able to find anything else to feed my wife and of course at 9:30 at night there wasn't anything but fast food which wasn't going to work either. Anyway, the greeting by the male servers when we first walked up was worth a few stars and had the food been have good we would have added the place to our list for future visits. Maybe we caught him on a bad day but I can't give them more than three stars...