El Torito — Restaurant in Corona

We have always had a great experience with El Torito, but today's lunch went from bad to worse. My husband and I had an appointment and decided to take a bit longer before getting back to work for El Torito and sit down. Our server came over to us and received our drink order. I asked if they had any margarita specials she quickly replied no. I said okay I'll take water. We went to order our food, and I wondered if any of the lunch items had chicken that was all breast meat not mixed or dark. She said no. I said okay, I'll take the cheese enchiladas, my husband ordered and I said I need to order the lunch chicken fajitas for my daughter. She said I'll put it in before you finish your meal. Oh, that's white breast meat she says. What, I had asked her this?! What kind of tortillas do you want? I want corn. A different server brought our food, and we could see the manager and our server sitting at a table during our entire lunch talking. They were just a few tables away. No one checked on us, we never once got a refill on our water and coke. I kept looking for her as we had finished our meal and I wanted to change the tortillas to flour on togo order but she never once came over. Someone else came over and took our plates. Finally, our server came over, and I told her about the tortillas she looked shocked and walked away. We waited and waited and waited for our food for at least fifteen minutes. I knew she hadn't put our order in. No drink refill. No server. No manager. She comes out after forever and hands us our check and to go bag. My husband looks at our bill, and it has dinner fajitas. A ten dollar difference. We wait, and we expect, and we wait and no server. No manager. My husband goes up to the host and says can we see a manager? We got dinner fajitas and not lunch. We wait, and we sit, and we wait... Finally, the server comes over and says you ordered dinner instead of lunch let me get the manager. No, we didn't. We watch her take our bag and place it on the kitchen counter. We wait, and we sit, and we wait. We see the manager he walks by and yells hey brotha to some guy out front and keeps walking. The server grabs our bag, the same one dropped on the counter and brings it over to us and places on our table. Here your bill has been adjusted. My husband goes to pay, and there's a tea on our bill we didn't order. Coke and tea. I had water. We tell her. By now this is a living nightmare, and we want out never to return. We tell her, and she brings over cash and my husband said nope I just took off the total. We get the food home to our daughter, Cold food and there isn't a single tortilla included in her meal. Unreal! Our lunch took over an hour in the restaurant and affected our work day, and the manager sat at tables talking to two different female servers during the lunch hour never checking on anyone, and we couldn't find our server aside from watching her seated at a table while we...

The food is delicious, which is why I gave it 3 stars. We go there at least 3 times a month for Taco Tuesday. One quick change they could do would be to do not ask the lady at the taco bar to be the one filling up the bar. She should have someone else to help her keep the taco bar filled while she continues serving the tacos so customers don’t have to wait in line.

About the service of the waitresses, I would have given it a 1 star. We usually order an appetizer and some drinks to accompany our tacos. Most of the time after they brought out the food, they never stopped by to ask if we needed anything (I prefer not to mention their names at this time, but they were two females). About a month ago, I asked one of them for some utensils and she came back 10 min later when my food was already cold. Last week, we ordered a side salad and a bacon wrapped shrimp and she only brought the shrimp. About 15 min later, when she came back we asked her about the salad and she said she was going to check. And about 15-20 min again, we asked her to being the check and we reminded her she never brought us the salad. She only said “oh, I’m sorry”

As a server, I hope they are all re trained and perhaps follow the lead of Sol. Sol has an amazing customer service. She always greets you with a smile in her face and she and she is only working fast and asking customers if they need anything. She definitely needs to be promoted! I think she’s one of the reasons why we continue going to this location.

Update: May 2023 I came back to give 5 stars (previously 3 stars (March 2023) The week after my first review, the manager contacted me via email letting me know they were aware of the situation. Even though she didn’t follow through with me (she said she wanted to chat but she never called me ) I can tell they did do something about the poor customer service we were receiving. I can see a big difference! Waitresses come more often, everyone greets you as soon as a you walk in. They smile and come back to your table to make sure you don’t need anything. It was a great improvement! Now, food is not only delicious but customer service is great! Thank you!

August 2024- This place continues with an Outstanding customer service from hostess to manager. Our waiter Johan Sanchez was always on time asking us if we needed anything else and with great attitude. He’s just the best! Our food was delicious and for a good price. Great atmosphere! I would...

This is the last time my wife and I waste our money here, the very first time I was taken here for a birthday dinner, our server took forever to take our order. When she did I ordered the macho combo mainly because of the chile relleno, which I never got once the food came. The place wasn't busy but our server was nowhere to be found, actually had to get up and go near the kitchen to let someone know I had a missing item from my order. Took forever to get it and our original server came and acted very rude about the situation and dropped off my plate and again took off. Never coming back to check on us or ask if anyone needed a refill so we didn't tip. After that we started taking out just because it always seemed packed and didn't want to wait too long to be seated and wait longer to get our order taken. The very first time we ordered everything was on point, second time once we got home my wife noticed she was missing a taco from her combination plate. Called them and they didn't know what to say, so they took my number and said the manager will call us back, which he never did. Another time I ended up missing a Chile relleno, this time the manager got on the phone and basically was careless about the situation and offered no solution to the problem as if it was an "Oh well" situation. After that it was mainly more misses than hits. Another had extremely salty beans had to toss them, another order had chips that were obviously cooked with old oil, another order we were missing a tray of beans and rice which had to wait an extra 20 minutes longer to get, making the rest of our meal really cold and tasteless, and on this last particular order I had got a sizzling combo which my shrimp fajitas were missing my fajitas, the vegetables (bell peppers and onions) it was just shrimp. Never again. Sorry for the one star but they didn't have anything lower than that because this place doesn't even deserve a...