Vaqueros Mexican Restaurant & Taqueria — Restaurant in Colorado Springs

This review is not about the food. The food is almost always pretty good. This is a review about very shady business practices and margaritas! The margaritas here are not cheap, but they do the trick. You have a menu listing various margaritas all listing different types of tequila. I noticed that I would order margaritas here and sometimes they would come out tasting great and sometimes really different and I thought that was odd.

On this particular visit I decided to sit at the bar. My wife and I both ordered margaritas off the menu. Both the same type and I was seated in a way I could watch them make the margaritas. In this case the margarita was to be made with Don Julio Tequila and topped with Grand Marnier. These are just under $19 each so not on the cheap end. If you take a look at the bar they have two big beverage dispensers.. one filled with a greenish margarita looking liquid and the other with what I am guessing is an amber tequila that is probably inexpensive. I noticed every margarita was being made out of these dispensers so I paid attention. When they went to make our margaritas they used tequila from the one dispenser and whatever the other mix is from the other. They then walked over to where all the premium tequilas are and did a swirl of Don Julio.. shake.. pour.. and then they pulled out a bottle that was obviously not Grand Marnier (very distinct bottle) from the well area under the bar and topped off the margarita. My wife and I were shocked we just paid almost $19 for basically a well margarita.

We decided to order a second margarita as an experiment. We purposely ordered a different margarita with different ingredients to see how this would go. This one was to be made with El Patron (if my memory serves correctly) and topped with Cointreau. To our amazement we watched them make the maragarita the same exact way.. using the Amber (whatever) tequila in the large beverage dispenser and then using the Mix in the other beverage dispenser, doing a quick topper swirl of the actual tequila it says you are getting and then.. the best part.. they used the same bottle to top the margarita off that was supposed to be Grand Marnier from the last margarita we ordered (which it obviously wasnt). I am guessing based on the bottle shape its a cheap orange liqueur of some sort.

We had to stop the experiment at this point because cheap tequila and orange liqueur still works pretty good and we had to drive home eventually.. but thats not the point. You are paying for premium liquors and they are, with purpose, trying to cheap out and being very deceptive. If you only get a splash of premium tequila mixed with cheap tequila you should know that before you pay $15-$20 for a drink. As far as the Grand Marnier or Cointreau topper.. they both came from the same bottle that looked like a triple sec bottle and I am pretty sure they completely lied on that one. It surprises me they are doing this.. why not just give people what they paid for! ...

Went here with my wife for a few margaritas and some carryout after the gym. Our waitress was very friendly, but everything went downhill after that. Our margaritas were super salty and I suffered through mine but my wife drank like 1/10th of hers and we ordered new drinks. We didn't ask for them to replace the drinks because we acknowledge that hey, we may not like the drink but that's not their fault. I wouldn't act like the restaurant owes me a replacement because I found their drink way too salty. I just won't buy that again, it's whatever. They didn't offer to replace hers even when my wife handed hers back 90% full but whatever, I wasn't expecting it anyways. Still would give 4 stars at this point.

Then, we ordered non-margs and my wife had a mule with a separate shot of vodka to add. After adding the floater she had one sip and accidentally spilled it across the bar. Again, that's on us. I don't expect them to replace a drink that we spilled but like, you sorta hope that a restaurant would proactively offer it? They saw it happen, they saw it was full...that's sorta normal customer service right? But nope, nothing. We cleaned the bar ourself with about 100 bar napkins while waiting 5min for anyone to acknowledge us or give us a towel. And the restaurant was busy. This is Friday night, there's a constant rotation of like 4 or 5 people behind the bar rotating around so you'd think one of them would acknowledge us trying to clean up a mess. I'd prefer to clean our own mess but they wouldn't even come over to give us a towel to clean it up and my wife and I are just sitting there laughing at like how little any of the staff seemed to care. It wasnt a huge mess or anything and again, we're not jerks and I've worked in restaurants most of my life so it was just sort of shocking how unexpectedly bad the whole experience was. Suffice to say we won't come back and we'll tell others to steer clear. There's no shortage of Mexican restaurants in town that at least have their...

'Queros: First off, the place isn't horrible. At least the food was edible and didn't get anyone sick. This place is the most chintziest establishment I've ever been too. It took a few minutes to get our glasses of water. Hint: if you are a waiter person, you never set down chips n salsa without giving the customers a drink to go with it. The place is so cheap that they deceptively stack the cheese, sour cream, pico, etc on top of a bed of nasty lettuce to try and make it look like you are getting more than a pinch of each. The scraping of refried beans was muy delicioso. The chimichanga should have been crispy and brittle but it wasn't. I would not doubt the food was microwaved because by the time i got to my 3rd taco, the food was stone cold and was brought out quite fast for a large order. We ordered a giant order of fajitas for 2, which should be the best entree to sample and the cast iron skillet looked like a pile of grilled onions, with no green bell peppers, topped off with some garbage scraps of meat. We got the combo meat but there really wasn't any beef to be found anywhere except some perimeter like scraps. If you are paying for this entree, it should be generous marinated strips of beef and chicken that actually have some flavor to them. I would say about the only actual good thing at the place was the chips and salsa. Their salsa verde was the worst blandest salsa I've ever had. Charging for to-go boxes? That will totally get customers to return back. Clearly this place is only going to attract people that don't know what real mexican food should taste like. This could be described as 'Colorado-Mex' maybe. To sum it up, this place needs a new manager that isn't chintzy AF on everything, and someone that actually knows how to make real mexican cuisine. This ain't it, which is sad because this place is a really nice aesthetically pleasing place on the inside with lovely decor, unfortunately the food is what counts. Try 'On the...