On The Border Mexican Grill & Cantina — Restaurant in Colorado Springs

I am writing this as it is fresh in my mind, unlike the tortilla for my burrito. My partner and I were just at the OTB-Powers. This has to be the worst experience in a chain restaurant I have had in a long time. I don't like complaining but I feel compelled to write this down and I am only writing MY personal gripes down: I will preface this by saying our waitress is a GEM of a human and I AM going to be long winded. She has absolutely no fault in the lack of goodness/deliciousness. I ordered the Texas margarita flight, the classic burrito and my partner and I shared the queso/guac. I will address the issues with each. The flight consisted of a ghost pepper marg, a regular house marg, and a peach marg. The house was a standard marg, nothing special so no complaints. The peach was awfully sweet and they use too much peach syrup(??)schnapps(??) either way it was unbalanced in more ways than one. Now to the ghost pepper marg, what a disappointment, not spicy and it honestly felt slightly deceptive, but please believe me, I understand that chain restaurant bartenders are to follow a strict recipe, so I don't blame the bartenders either, but come on. If you're a spicy lover, don't bother. The burrito was just MEH, capital EH. Taco bell has more flavor and I understood going into this experience it was more for the nostalgia factor than anything, but I did not expect it to be so bland. The tortilla itself was not warm, only heated by the ingredients inside and the wrap on the burrito was also lacking. It had bigger dog ears than my hound dog. I wish I had taken a photo but I was hungry so I tucked in. The rice was bland and undercooked but also tasted like the bagged rice you get from Walmart, but even that has a better texture and flavor. The beans were average. For the last bit of my review I will tell you what is wrong with their guac and queso. They're bland, both of them. The guac? No lime, no salt, no cilantro, no or little tomato/red onion, no jalapeno, no garlic. The queso? Tasted like they took rotel and added it to Tostitos queso you get in the store. The last little rant: the chips either had no salt or so much salt it burned your tongue. I am so sorry to complain so much but I felt compelled because it was such a bad experience. R&D or corporate management needs to visit random locations because this was horrid. Please for the love of everything that should be in a restaurant, please please please make things from scratch again. You are charging scratch made prices for...

As expected but not wanted. We haven't been to On The Border in over ten years. Why? The last meal we had there was not freshly made at all. It tasted like yesterdays left overs. We decided not to go back again. Fast forward 11 years and we found ourselves totally exhausted after a day of shopping. Right across the street from where we were was OTB. We decided to try it again figuring things surely must have improved. We were wrong. If anything, things were worse. Walked in and the place was almost empty so no wait for a table. The server we had was not the most polite young girl but she took our drink orders and left. Came back a few minutes later with two overflowing beverages and took our order. The sticky mess on our table from our drinks made it very uncomfortable sitting there. When I asked her for a wet rag to clean it up she got very upset. Came back with a wet moldy towel and handed it to me. I wasn't about to touch it so we just picked up our stuff and moved to another table. We really should have left. When she came back with our food she was visibly upset that we moved. I explained that it shouldn't have been necessary to have us clean the table. We were very polite to her figuring maybe she had a bad day. To continue, our food came out very fast after we ordered it. One bite and I knew it wasn't fresh. Nobody could have made our orders that quickly from scratch. The lettuce and tomatoes were hot and the inside of the burrito was cold. A definite nuke job on some old food. So, all in all, another bad experience. What really upset me is the fact Colorado Springs has many amazing Mexican restaurants and like an idiot I picked a bad, fake...

Update 4/5/25

moved to Va and back and apparently forgot not to go to this OTB. 🤦‍♀️

First time I have seen this response from them from ten years ago. Not sure why he replied to "Lori" as that isn't my name, nor is that what is on my acct. 🤔 Who does that?!?

Tonight I ordered guacamole live, and extra salsa. Guess what they didn't want to give me. LOL See below. 🙄

But what really gets me is the guacamole live is $13+ tax and it comes as two avocados in a bowl, and the other stuff (no salt) in individual containers. 🤔 So.... I paid $16 for $3 in groceries?!?! So Incould make the guacamole myself. And no plasticware mind you, so with my hands I guess. 🤦‍♀️

Then, the manager was asinine about the fact that I only left $1.60 tip for them. Dude, what am I tipping for in the first place? 🤔

They brought me out two extra salsa and I carried them to my car and tossed them. Sorry, the childish way the MGR behaved at my "insignificant tip" for the lack of service I got, no wayyyy was I trusting that salsa.

The food is ok, but they are stingy with the salsa. More than once we have ordered togo food and asked for extra salsa. They never put it in there. I have ordered take out from many OTB in CO & Tx, and this is the only restaurant that refuses to give us extra salsa. If we ate inside we would get salsa with our chips and salsa with our meal. And more salsa if we requested it. Yet, to ask for salsa to go with our chips, and salsa to go with our meal when taking food home is unacceptable. I will drive a little further to go to another OTB from now now. One that gives me...