El Dorado Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Durham

My husband and I popped in for a bite and a beer early last week while waiting for an oil change at the Jiffy Lube right there. We noticed and appreciated the good service right away, from both the host who seated us and our server, they were very prompt and friendly.

However I have to say this is almost the most basic and most disappointing "Mexican" or Tex-Mex restaurant I've been to, second only to The Flying Burrito in Raleigh. The queso dip with chorizo was tasty enough but was much more of a sauce than a dip, it was very runny. It also tasted a bit too much like slightly dressed up Velveeta. I know some people like that but it's not hard to make real queso dip with real cheese, which is far superior.

But the most surprising and truly disappointing, to the point of just embarrassing for them (I'd hope), were the so-called "chiles rellenos". I love chiles rellenos, they're one of my favorite Mexican dishes and I almost always get them any time I go to a Mexican restaurant. So I've had a lot. These were not chiles rellenos. They weren't coated and fried, they were just baked or sauteed plain, served open with a mess of cheese and, in the case of my husband's beef one, the most unpleasant, mealy, fine and grainy, sad, grey and bland ground beef I've ever had in my life. I reminded my strongly of dog or cat food and I do not say things like that lightly. It could not have been quality meat that was also horribly cooked on top of that. If indeed they even cooked it fresh themselves, I honestly doubt it.

The icing on the cake (I ended up wishing it was icing and cake...), was the sauce all over the chiles. I swear it could have been any generic, jarred pizza or pasta sauce. It was just tomato sauce, tasted just like it belonged on mediocre spaghetti. These were just the laziest, most incomplete, boring and also just confusing chiles rellenos I've ever had, by a long shot. I've never had bad ones.

I don't know if other dishes are somehow better and we got unlucky but what we did have was not a remotely promising sampling of their menu, plus nothing should be that bad and weird and low quality anyway. It's not hard to make good Mexican, I really hope they step up their game even by a little. That stuff can be cheapish but still good, right now it's just cheap in the bad way and it shows, so just give them a hard pass for now. Unless you're just going in for a...

Two stars because the food was delicious! The service however was horrible and I've never felt so disrespected and undervalued as a patron before in my life! I've visited this location a few time in the past and the food has always been pretty good which is really the only reason why I decide to come back every now and then. When I arrived I ordered a regular house margarita and tasted absolutely disgusting and I was very unsatisfied. I wanted to tell the bartender immediately but he never came back to check on me and wasn't close enough to hear me when I said "excuse me". He was on the opposite end of the bar chatting with his friend so I asked one of the servers to tell him to come over when they walked past him. Instead of telling the bartender, she told the manager, which i'm sure was just an honest mix up. When the manager came over I told him that I actually had requested the bartender but the only thing I needed was for him to do remake the margarita. The manager said to me in the rudest tone "We can't change out Tequila" and I responded "So you can't just remake it? It just doesn't taste all that great, i'm sorry but I can't drink that" (and I was super polite). Then he rudely grabbed the drink and poured it out and says "We made a lot of margarita's today and no one else complained. So what do you want?". I felt so disrespected that I just told him to give me my check. I won't return to this location again. The way that the manager spoke to me was unacceptable and just flat out rude. All I wanted him to do was remake the margarita! I was even going to request that he remake it using top-shelf Tequila, which would have made him more money in the end because it would have been more expensive! I'm so...

I’ve been to this restaurant multiple times and never had I had a bad experience. I tried something new this time going. Now being that this was something new I was told that all of the topping would be separate from the food. My request was that it put in different container’s because of my tomatoe allergy. The food came out and of course it was all together and had tomatoes on it. I called over the server to get a new order. He left with the food and came right back. The kitchen staff simply picked out the tomatoes and sent the dish back out. I could tell that it was just picked out because some tomatoes pieces were left in the food. I then asked for the manager and explained what took place. He simply removed the dish and apologized and walked away. This was very disappointing for me because after informing them of the tomato allergy it was completely ignored. Thank god I paid close attention or this could have ended much worst. Please get better when your playing with peoples lives after being informed about an allergy. If that was something that they couldn’t do I would have simply ordered...