Alamo Springs Café — Restaurant in Comfort

Was hoping to enjoy a great burger. When walking up we had no idea where or how to order. Spot outside that you would normally place orders before made it easy and seem less. So seeing that spot not open immediately caused confusion on the process of what to do. Staff told us to sit at a table and someone would come by to take our order. Sat outside next to stage and waited 15 minutes and never saw any staff attend to any of the 6 tables with people as well as ourselves. You could tell people were getting irritated with the wait. So we went inside thinking we were missing something on how to put in our orders. Complete chaos inside. Sat at a table and waited another 10 minutes. Noticed a line forming up by cash register and it looked like people were ordering so got up to get in line to try and order. A Couple in line in front of us were visibly angry with the service and were asking to speak to manager after I heard him mumble that they had been waiting over an hour for their appetizers. Then I see a lady attempting to bring their appetizers to them at the register however they had already decided to leave. We chose to leave with them after waiting nearly 30 minutes to order with only speaking to one staff member who told us to sit down and wait for someone to take our order when we first got there. I know the food is good here but the flow of everything funneling through the narrow area where all the food is cooked is a complete mess inside. People running into people and a lot of congestion and confusion. No clear directions on where or how to order. Suggestion. Put the ordering station outside like it was before so you pay and order your food to take some of the pressure off all the inside chaos. That would allow the servers the ability to just focus on service and not the ordering and payment piece that they are having to do. It was clearly too much for them to handle with the current system that is in place. Could also consider putting a sign out to make it clear on the process towards the entrance. Would love to come back again since this place has long been a favorite eating place of ours when visiting Fredericksburg. Please consider some of the suggestions to make it a better experience next time.

Came back for another try on a Friday vs a Saturday and it was a lot less busy. Was greeted as we walked up and given an idea of what to expect which was nice compared to last time. Food was good. Had order in after only a few minutes and food out after...

Update May 2025: We returned to Alamo Springs Cafe today. Was our first visit just a fluke? Was it really that good? We came on a Sunday at 1:45 pm. We discovered that we could have come for breakfast, too! That will have to wait. Today's visit we reordered the shrimp plate. We subbed the fries for onion rings and got a side of fried mushrooms. The fried items appear to share the same (or similar) breading. That's not bad! To the contrary, the coating is the perfect delivery system. Onions don't play well with my tummy. But my wife said the onion rings were the freshest she's ever had. The same applied to the freshness of the mushrooms and the sweet, big, pink shrimp. All of it was burn your mouth hot when it arrived at the table. Not a hint of "oilyness." Alan actually sat down at the table next to us to take our order. Health care would improve tons if a note from Alan. They brought a water bowl for our pup! All said, we can say that our first exceptional experience was NOT a fluke. There are many outstanding places to eat in Fredericksburg. But, Alamo Springs is a lovely, affordable, surprise in a lovely part of the Hill Country.

Friday, late lunch, early dinner at Alamo Springs Cafe. This restaurant is out in the boonies. Beautiful boonies for sure, but still boonies. So, what is the charm of this place? I don’t like country music, if that’s what they were playing. But, whatever it was I don’t like and it was playing here and it completely fit. There’s no well-defined building for the restaurant. It’s a rambling affair. It’s completely, unpredictably right for this unpretentious restaurant. After our order, the greater and waitress said, For the wine, go through the back door and go all the way to the back wall and get yourself a glass. Then, go into the cooler and pour your wine. Apparently, this is called the Hill Country Honor System. Who does that? It’s new to me? It’s like you entered the back door of your childhood neighbor and his Mom said, Go get a drink out of the fridge. Whatever, the food is better than honorable. My wife got catfish and shrimp. I got a burger with bleu cheese, bacon, and the fixins (minus the onions [for which Fredericksburg should thank me 😉]). Everything, including every aspect of the environment was perfect: off-the-beaten-path Hill Country, rustic charm, fun, and outstanding, easy food....

Man it hurts to write this but the disappointment is overwhelming and they won't improve if they don't know. We waited and waited to give them time to work out all of the post-Brian kinks but to no avail. We wanted it to be good and nostalgic like pre-Brian but nope. I will say it was nice to see that they did away with the whole pandemic order outside thing, that was useless and slow. My wife and I each ordered our own burgers and decided to split some regular fries. We received the burgers in a somewhat timely fashion but no fries hoping that they would be right out. Well we had each completely finished our burgers and then our fries came out. We turned them away(which was good since they really looked kind of bad and unattractive) and said no thank you since we were already finished and the waiter was very unapologetic and seemed to laugh it off. They did remove the fries from the order though. The seasoning on the burger did taste good although I thought it was in excess and a bit salty because of that. To add insult to injury after the fry incident, the waiter came to the table with the payment device and literally sat down and stared at us while we filled out the tip information and had the where with all to say "If you love me, you'll tip me". Note to waiters, walk away during the tip portion. Do not sit down, do not stare, never ever ever ever ever tell a customer they SHOULD tip you, simply walk away and don't make it awkward. I'm going to chalk that up to him being young and immature but seriously never do that again. He also tried to tell us the the jalapeno cheese burger buns were made fresh there, huge fail. Every restaurant and their dog uses that same bun from the same vendor. I should add that we are local now and asked if there was a local's discount so we didn't get wrapped up in touristy prices, that was laughed at as well. We were really hoping for great things and a place to bring family members that visit and our local group outings since we are literally only 3 miles from there. Hopefully things will improve and they will get better help. Might consider firing up the old cash register and going back to the old honor system and be less dependent on waitstaff. Those...