Don Tequilas Mexican Grill & Cantina — Restaurant in Columbia

Hey. My name is Jamie. I'm a long time customer of this place. I like several different things that they have to offer. However... It bothers me to even approach this in conversation, but something has gone left ◀️ about this place. The last few times that I have visited Don Tequila's has not been pleasant 😢. The place can be empty and they will leave you standing and waiting to be seated. Well... Yesterday took the cake 🎂. A friend and myself decided to eat at Don Tequila's for lunchtime. We waited at least 15 min before we were seated. If that's not enough when we finally got seated we didn't get offered anything to drink 🍻. We received no menu, and our waitress walked away from us and didn't return for a long time. We literally had to say something to make her come back to our table. At this time my friend said something about us not being waited on. Her response was we're short staffed and she said it with an attitude. I ordered and my friend did as well. A white family came in during the conversation. The waitress walked immediately over to the white family and made sure they got properly seated. The waitress then took their orders. We said something amongst each other and continued to wait for our food. When the food came out plates began going to the white family's table and not ours. We had a twenty minute or more head start on this other family and ordered simple... Nothing hard. So another white family came in while we were going through this and once again they were immediately seated and taken care of. My friend and I are now waiting with just drinks and nothing else but chips and salsa. I can't make this up... Food comes out and starts heading to the other white family. Blatant disrespect. Bold Statement... I asked for a manager and one never came. I asked the guy behind the bar to come talk to me and he never came either. As a matter of fact he begin helping our waitress get food to the other two white families that we were far in front of. We caught the hint, left the restaurant and went to Flamming Grill to eat. They do not want our business there. Please lets find somewhere else to go. I will not be back, and hopefully my people will read this and stop going as well. We need to stop supporting anyone who's treating our people like this. I'm Jamie Sherman / Butta Sherman on Facebook. If you have any questions please feel free to text me. Putting...

Worst carryout experience of my life and possibly the worst customer service as well.

I put in an order for carryout tonight and was told that they were doing curbside pickup, which I didn't expect (especially on Cinco De Mayo) but I was glad to hear was an option. When I arrived I couldn't park near the door because people were blocking the street in the front of the restaurant, so I parked on Afton Ct. I tried calling several times while I waited but I either got what sounded like a fax machine, or a message that said voicemail isn't set up for this number, so they either had a suspiciously timed phone outage or they disconnected the phones. After 15 minutes it was obvious no one was coming out, so I moved and was able to park in front this time. Another 10 or 15 minutes passed and still no one came out with my food. Then I finally went inside, where I was ignored for about 5 minutes and after I got anxious about standing around with a bunch of people, I went back outside.

After a few more minutes, I asked a waitress if she could check on my order but I never heard back from her (she probably forgot or didn't even check). Then after another 10 minutes I went back inside and was ignored for about 5 or 10 minutes before someone finally brought up my order. She said that she had been calling my name but no one answered, and I said that's because I was outside in my car expecting to do curbside pickup and she rudely said, "sorry we're busy, it's Cinco De Mayo" and when I tried to respond to her, she ignored me and moved on to another customer.

This restaurant should not be offering curbside pickup if they're not going to actually provide the service, and if it's going to be problem on specific busy days like Cinco De Mayo, they should not be suggesting it on those days. This whole experience took almost an hour when it should have taken 5 minutes or less. They were clearly understaffed and the phone being out was definitely a huge problem (I called over 30 times while I was waiting and didn't get through once), but also there is no clearly marked area for curbside pickup and no one seems to be watching for customers waiting for curbside. There is obviously a big management and/or training problem here. After a couple good experiences recently this place had been becoming our new favorite Mexican restaurant, but after tonight's debacle we might...

This was the worst dining experience I have ever had. The food was decent but the service was awful. Shortly after we were seated, a couple at a table next to us got up and left without eating, commenting about how poor their service was. Turns out we had the same server and ours would be just as bad. I will say this... he got our orders right. That's all the good that I can say though. From the time he took our orders, we never saw him again until he brought the check. Someone else brought the food out. Someone else refilled our drinks after we asked them to. We had to ask someone else to find our sever to bring our check (three times). After our nearly non-existent server showed up with the check, I noticed the mandatory 18% gratuity that they added. (They add gratuity to parties of 5 or more, which sounds like a fee and not a gratuity, but that's a different conversation.). I asked him to adjust the gratuity down to 10%, and honestly, that was probably too high, but I didn't want to stiff him. He said the system adds the 18% automatically and he couldn't change it. I then asked for a manger. Shortly another server came by the table to try to get us to pay the full 18%. I asked if he was the manager, but he was not. He said he was "helping the manager" and that the manager was not available. I tried to explain the situation about the lack of service but this guy just wanted to argue. Due to his rude attitude, I asked him to remove the gratuity entirely. All this faux manager had to say was that he apologized for the poor service and I would have paid the 10% that I said I would. On the way out, faux manager said that if we wanted to eat there again, to choose a different restaurant in the area instead. My wife was shocked that he said that. I couldn't believe it either. Instead of apologizing and trying to make it right, he told us to not come back. Well, they will definitely get their request. We will never go back to...