Taco John's — Restaurant in Cloquet

Update 10/14/24: Steak Escape is no longer included at this location. They've updated their interior and color scheme. The seats are hard, plastic cubes in the booths, and hard wood and metal chairs elsewhere. Still good food though!!! I love Taco John's, and the one in Cloquet seems to be the best in the Arrowhead region. There are are so few near where I live. So, on our way to or from The Iron Range, we always stop at TJs in Cloquet. Every experience with them except one have been excellent. 2 years ago we were really looking forward to dinner because none of us have had TJs in almost 5 years!!! We got a Six Pack and a Pound, half soft, half hard, to split amongst 3 of us. The shells, tortillas and toppings were all fresh and delicious... but the taco meat was lukewarm, dry and burnt or overcooked and dried out and hard in spots!!! I've never had meat so gross from a Taco John's!!! And the Potato Ole's were room temperature, soggy and just blah... too much salt and not enough "seasoning". We were there right around 6pm on a Saturday, so we felt like everything should have been hot and fresh for dinner rush! I'm hoping the subpar quality was a fluke, but time will tell! We've been to the Hibbing and Duluth locations twice each, and they don't stack up against Cloquet's...

The food is great but not always the service. Went into the restaurant..... I don't judge workers by age but when the majority of workers possibly first- time employed and no one knows what is what...it gets disgusting....there was one young man leading the kitchen...one young lady leading DT...they had it together but everyone else was like a chicken with it's head cut off....the lead cook kept telling a young worker "turn around and help them...there is something wrong". he didn't know what he meant...the DT lady had to come out and help us...our third attempt to get my daughter's order right. She ordered a fried stuffed chicken chipotle without sauce #9...she got beef....then..she got #11 with sauce.....the third time was the charm....Of the maybe 6 people on deck 2 had it together.... It became an epidemic ..customer after customer started searching their bags and asking for missing items.....at least one DT...

Avoid this location at all costs! Taco Johns is usually pretty great, but this specific location is awful. If there's more than one car in the drive thru, you'll typically wait 20-30 minutes just to get your food (this is not an exaggeration, I have literally idled for 30 minutes in the drive thru before). They almost ALWAYS screw up your order, and when you point it out, the staff is always mean about it, as if it's YOUR fault that THEY screwed up. I have also spoken with former employees of the location, and they have told me that, as there is typically no manager in the evenings, they never actually do the cleanings that they're supposed to do every evening (IE the fountain pop nozzles need to be cleaned every evening - and the employee told me that once when they actually cleaned them, they were full of MOLD - yes, they serve you drinks with MOLD in them here!)

AVOID this location, and go LITERALLY...