El Rey Cantina — Restaurant in East Ellijay

Absolutely disgusting. Do NOT eat here. We went to El Rey Cantina expecting tacos, and what they served us was an insult to food: a stale shell stuffed with old lettuce, cheap dairy cheese, and flavorless minced meat. No onions, no cilantro, no salsa—nothing. Just sad, tasteless slop.

When we complained, the woman working there told us the menu “includes Mexican food too,” but the menu was completely unclear—Tex-Mex and actual Mexican dishes were all mixed together. How is anyone supposed to know what’s what? When we pointed this out, she shrugged and said, “99% of our clients are white people, so we don’t separate it.” That was not only offensive, but also completely false—many restaurants do separate Tex-Mex from authentic Mexican food, and it should be obvious to anyone who cares about their customers.

On top of that, she was rude, dismissive, and arrogant. Instead of listening, she doubled down, basically saying she doesn’t care about clients like us.

And the food? The meat tasted like absolutely nothing—just salty mush with no flavor at all. The lettuce was old and disgusting, the cheese looked and tasted cheap, and even just looking at the plate you could tell it was going to be horrible. Nothing about it...

We came to El Rey after spending a weekend mountain biking in town. We were starving but on our way home so we decided to stop here to eat since it is conveniently located off the highway. The wait staff were super friendly and attentive, the food on the other hand was flavorless and unappealing. I ordered the tacos ranchos (steak tacos) and they had zero to no flavor. I am use to eating street tacos (lengua, Al pastor, chorizo, etc.) which are typically seasoned very well but these tacos I felt had little to no seasoning at all. The tortillas were straight out of a bag and extremely dry. My friends ordered the enchiladas and both of them said the same thing (flavorless bland food). My friend also ordered a mojito and it was terrible. Not sure who they are catering to with this type of food but anyone that knows anything about Mexican food would probably not want to eat here. It's basically at Taco Bell with free...

The menu doesn’t have alcohol listed and when I asked the waitress if there was a drink menu, she said “No” and walked away. Next time around, I asked what the margarita options were and she only said “Strawberry or peach.” I looked at their website to see if I could find a menu, but the page isn’t finished.

The strawberry margarita on the rocks (without the requested salt) was so thick that it looked like syrup coming out of the straw and tasted just as bad. I ordered the pollo durango but the menu description says nothing about it being covered in spinach and mushrooms, which I can’t eat. Very frustrating to have to send both my drink and meal back. Will not...