Bean Bandit Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Colorado Springs

Bean Bandit is a fitting name for this restaurant as it's absolutely criminal how bad the food is. I read some reviews before my family and I went and had high hopes. I will disclose we are from Texas because I feel that is important (some people think we are biased due). The overall look of the restaurant was similar to what we would see back home and we thought maybe they would be a good choice for dinner. We were seated relatively fast but did have to wait about 5-10 minutes for our server to get to us which wasn't that big of a deal, they did look a bit understaffed as we only saw 2 servers during our visit. When we started looking at the menu I immediately knew this wasn't anything like the Mexican food places we're used to. Chips and salsa are usually complimentary and bottomless anywhere you go but they were on the menu to order as an appetizer and the first refill is free. The salsa was not salsa. It was tomato paste with water and onions added to it. The "mild" and "hot" tasted the same (imagine chunky pizza sauce that doesn't taste good at all). I wanted to be hopeful even though the menu had nothing very appetizing on it and you can't do substitutions for any combination plates. They have green chille sauce, red sauce, and queso for their enchilada sauce so if that's not your speed I wouldn't get it. If you enjoy seasoning in your food I would definitely not eat here. My husband and I both ordered the enchiladas (beef and chicken) with queso sauce and the only flavor was from the queso. If I have to smother something in cheese for there to be any taste it's not good food. There was no seasoning at all. The rice looked old and was extremely mushy. The refried beans tasted so bad after two bites I had to fight down puke. I haven't ever sent food back to the kitchen because I was taught it is rude, and I've never wanted to send food back so badly but I didn't see a point because everything we had tried to that point was terrible so there's not much saving it by sending the food back. I've never left food on my plate and not taken it home but I left over half of what I ordered and went to the car because I felt so sick. Our sever was polite and other than the slight delay in the beginning she was very timely with checking on us and it's not her fault if the food was bad so nothing against her at all. The kids menu is just 3 options for quesadillas so we got my daughter the beans and rice as she's not interested in quesadillas. She only ate the rice after we poured queso all over it and even then said she didn't like...

I went in before the dinner hour while my son was warming up for his baseball game. Service was very friendly. Chips & salsa were homemade & offered mild & spicy. Reading the little story of the family business is a must. I’m from Houston, Texas & always loved how family oriented my Mexican friends were. It felt like that. I chose a combo meal (#1) to try more things. While I waited a had a need for the loo & honestly, I make a point to, at all restaurants. My mom always said if they don’t care that you see a messy bathroom, imagine the kitchen that you don’t see. And it was very clean, had soap so I didn’t have to worry the employees didn’t have soap after they use the restroom, & it smelled good. I tried a bite of each thing while I was hungry because you should never try new foods unless you’re hungry. My chili relleno was soft as they should be, that’s the traditional way. My chalupa chip was home made, not that store bought garbage I usually find in “Mexican” restaurants in Colorado. The beans & rice were excellent & very much like my old neighbor from Mexico City. My waitress had worked there for 20 plus years, since she was a teen so they must treat their employees well. Any place with high turnover should tell you something. The owner even did a stop by to teasingly scold me for being on my phone & not present in the moment. He said his momma would have taken it away lol. So I highly recommend you support this sweet little local gem. Oh, & they sell coke products which is a huge plus to me lol. And not that ridiculous & gross “freestyle” machine they use at to many places now. I won’t even eat at a place that can’t mix a good...

I really wanted to like Bean Bandit because it seems like it's a Colorado Springs Institution as it's been in the city for a very long time. This was my first time eating here. We were seated quickly and our drink orders taken and provided with chips and salsa. To read Salsas one extraordinary hot and the other extraordinary tomatoey. To make them work we have to combine them together. Our mouths were burning from trying the superhot one on its own first. No water at the table and it took some time before we could flag down a server to get our drinks. Our server was polite and courteous and let us know she had only been there for 4 days. I ordered the cheese enchiladas with onions and the red chili it comes with and my husband ordered the chili rellenos with green chili. I'm sorry to say that both were quite uninspiring and not what I would consider even really good. Both our dishes were just okay. Margaritas were pretty good I had Patron added to mine and that always is a plus. We both ordered our drinks with salt but mine barely had any and I didn't figure I wanted to wait for them to prepare another glass for me. Ticket was pretty high considering the plain meals we had but I attribute the $50 plus ticket mostly to the margaritas. It's unlikely we will return as I said the food just is only okay and I'm not okay with eating...