El Rey New Albany — Restaurant in Columbus

We came here tonight for the 2nd time & sadly, we will not be back. Our first experience last weekend was amazing w/ great service & excellent food. I wasn’t happy about being charged $1.50 for a lime on my margarita glass, which I didn’t ask for. We were also charged $3.50 for extra pico, when my husband’s fajitas barely came with any at all.

We were excited to have a new restaurant in New Albany & the food/service was overall great the 1st time, so we brought our kids back this evening. Unfortunately, this experience was absolutely terrible & we couldn’t wait to leave. We arrived by 4:10p (not busy), didn’t have a waitress come to our table until 4:23p to even take our drink order. We asked for a side of guacamole & queso with our chips upon ordering drinks. Our drinks took forever & we had to ask two additional times for our guacamole & queso, finally receiving queso, never received the guacamole. We rarely saw our waitress throughout our meal & had to flag down other staff to ask for her. When our food arrived, it was served at separate times, so we did not enjoy our meals together (7 people), by this time the restaurant was very busy. My son & his girlfriend both ordered steak tacos which came at the same time w/ rice on the plates, refried beans on a separate plate. Approximately 5mins after receiving their plates, a waiter came by & asked my son if he ordered both the beans & rice because only one came with the meal (beans OR rice). My son, nor his girlfriend, were ever asked if they wanted one or the other & weren’t aware there was an option upon ordering. The guy continued asking if they wanted both because he would have to charge extra, ended up taking both plates of beans from our table, almost pushing to take the plates or be charged extra after they had already been on the table for over 5mins at this point. As soon as that happened, we were ready to leave, how unprofessional & gross. Did they take these plates to serve to someone else after sitting on our table & why was he pushing so much about two stupid plates of refried beans that he’d have to charge extra for, even though we were never asked for told this from the start of the order. It took over 10mins to find our waitress & my husband to go to the other side of the restaurant to ask for our check. After finally receiving our check, I was in the process of pulling my card from my wallet & asked her to wait but she walked off anyway. It took another 7mins to flag her down just to take the card to finalize the bill. Overall, terrible experience the second time with extremely slow waitress & no follow-up throughout our dinner. The final issue was having the refused beans being taken back & how it was done. I certainly hope I wasn’t eating food that was on someone else’s table then served to me. We were hopeful this would be a new spot for our family to enjoy eating out in New Albany, but what a...

Great food, horrible service. The three times I’ve gone to El Rey I sat at the bar, and each visit the customer service got worse and worse. I’ll describe just my last visit since describing every visit would be a novel.

I sat at the bar and there were six other customers - not even half full. The three bar staff walked around the bar and every one of them looked right at me and ignored me. For ten minutes. Not even a “hello.” I asked the customers on either side of me and they said their service was also slow. I was about to walk out when a bartender finally came over. I ordered a drink and asked for a menu. He made the drink then instead of handing me a menu, made three more drinks. I’ve now been there 20 minutes before even getting a menu in my hands. I ordered, I ate, and not once did the bartender follow up or give me a refill on my drink.

After I was done I sat there with an empty plate in front of me for 15 minutes. Again the bar staff was mulling around and looking right at me and my empty plate. Not one person grabbed it. Not one person asked how my food was. Not one person asked if I wanted anything else. Finally I had to rudely wave my hands to get someone’s attention, but they couldn’t help. He barely acknowledged anything I said then went in the back for some reason - I never saw him again. And what’s weird is that he didn’t even take my plate! After another five minute wait and waving to get attention, I got the check, and when I left the empty plate was still sitting there!!!

To recap, I went to half full bar with three people working behind it, and was there over an hour and a half with one drink and two interactions with my server. It’s clear the bar staff are not customer oriented. They make fancy drinks that take them two minutes apiece and have glow lights in them. Gimmicks instead of quality service.

I won’t be going back for dine in. Everything will be to go now. They need to train their staff in BASIC customer service if they...

I didn't even know this new place was here. Thought I'd order dinner to go and give it a shot. Lots of customers inside-Good sign. Cool decor. Nice atmosphere. Ordered the Chorri Pollo, Castillo De Elote & Tres Leches Cake. Portions were BIG-enough to share between 2 people.

Chori Pollo: Beans, rice, & onion/pepper mix were all great. Didn't realize til I got home that my tortillas were forgotten, but not the end of the world. I WAS really disappointed to see though, that the chicken is not real, actual chicken, but the processed kind that has the grill marks on them already. Like the frozen, bagged grilled chicken patties you can find at the grocery store? Just some constructive criticism: I know real chicken is more expensive & more dangerous in a busy kitchen with strict temps & cross contamination risk, but man...these processed chicken patties with the perfectly painted on grill stripes reminds me so much of hospital cafeteria food. No amount of seasoning can make them taste like actual, authentic chicken. Chori Pollo is my go to at any Mexican restaurant. At most of them, I can taste the char grilled flavor, like they were actually cooked on an open flame/grill style oven. The grilled chicken patties just taste spongey & flavorless. 😔 There's no mistaking them for real chicken.

I'll try the tacos next time & skip the chicken menu.

The cake was huge and delicious. Fresh, airy & delicate, but rich. Very good. The chips & salsa were also great. Fresh/warm chips and mild salsa with a nice flavor. I just wouldn't recommend the...