West Texas Chophouse — Restaurant in El Paso

I find it really difficult to write negative reviews about places. I tend to find positive things to say about most situations and the learning experiences they offer. This was a pretty expensive learning opportunity for me and my family, in regard to money, and even more precious, our time together.

I would like to say that I appreciate everyone that tried to put the train back on the tracks, even after our daughter had a situation that required a cleanup pretty early on in the meal. But after 1.5 hours, we had not even had our order taken. We are from out of town, though born and raised here in El Paso, and we are slated to go back to Dallas where we now live tomorrow morning. We wanted to enjoy a dinner with our family and we reserved a group table. Our waiter was told 3 times that we were ready to order. He walked away and we didn't see him due to his attention being spent almost exclusively on the other table across from us in the private room.

After our initial waiter had walked away for the 3rd time to attend the other table, I got up and decided to speak to the manager that we had been waiting over 1.5 hours to even have our order taken. She tried to make it right and brought out some appetizers (which I did not confirm with her because I simply wanted us to be attended to fairly). Following that, the initial waiter finally started taking our order but looked completely distracted. I watched my family order and saw that he was completely tuned out and focusing on the other table still.

Eventually, a wonderful young lady came to the table and inherited a tough situation. She did awesome but there were still a ton of mistakes that were made by, not only the staff, but the manager as well. Food was brought out incomplete and orders were forgotten. My sister-in-law didn't get her food until everyone was pretty much finished because they forgot her meal. They also brought it out without the side she ordered and it was an incomplete meal.

I am EXTREMELY disappointed with this whole situation. I paid 145.00 with an 18 percent gratuity applied to everyone at the table for the worst service we have ever received. I wish I had the words to describe how heavy my heart is knowing I'll be leaving home tomorrow and have uncertainty as to when I'll be able to come back.

I completely understand that it's hard to balance so many people and you can't make everyone happy, but our request was simple; just treat us right. In any profession that is what it all boils down to. Treat people right.

Im glad that for 145.00 I was able to learn a little bit more about how not to treat people.

I waited until the frustration subsided to articulate on my feelings about this. I chewed on my thoughts and found that I could share this and still feel like a reasonable person with reasonable expectations.

I will never recommend this to anyone. I also have the understanding that my experience might not be everyone's. They will probably remain incredibly successful regardless of whether I am a customer or not. But 15 other people in my party feel the same way and it sucks to know that I could have just gone somewhere else and have been treated right.

For the record, and I accept responsibility for this, but I didn't even touch my food. I didn't feel like I could trust the business to do the right thing by even attending to us reasonably, so I didn't feel like I could trust them to not taint the food in some way. Came home and just ordered...

UPDATE: This time we chose the West Side location and everyone was very kind and attentive. Not only with us but it was clear that all of the staff was reaching out to the customers to know if they needed anything. Thank you so much for all your help and for helping me do something nice for my mom's 65th birthday, she loved it! I am changing my review from 1 star to 5 because we were pleasantly surprised this other time around.

I have no complaints about the food, my complaint is in regards to the service at this location.

#1 -The limited space in the lobby to have people waiting. The night we were there it was pouring outside with 40mph winds, and going out to your car was not an option since we parked at the other lot where there is no pavement. The result: everyone cramped in between the lobby and the hostess desk.

#2 - When we finally got the ok that our table was ready, we were told to go to the indoor patio that was freezing along with another party of senior citizens that had arrived just after us. 5 minutes later after we sat, one big table was available and another one to accommodate 2 guests. I was told we could not exchange our table and they proceeded to sit younger crowds while my mother and I and the party of seniors were left off to freeze on the outside patio. It seemed as discriminatory and I had to stand up to talk to the manager since even for me (early 30s) I felt how cold it was and how uncomfortable people were. So after speaking to the manager we finally were sat inside and he had kind of an attitude when we asked but I had to press him on how cold it was on the patio for us so he had no choice but to comply.

#3 - After all that, we kept our waitress but she forgot about us most of the time and we were not so far away to justify it. However, even with all that I tried to keep it lighthearted for my mother to enjoy her meal. The last thing I wanted to mention was that when I told the waitress that it was my mom's birthday, I was hoping to get a cake with the flare for her, but instead she just told me "oh you want a shot for her?" and I said we wanted the cake since she doesn't drink. The waitress then walked away and never came back with the cake only with the bill. Even after the bill she didn't even give us a bag or offered to bag the food unlike with the other tables she was serving . Not that I couldn't do it myself it was just the way service here was for us that night, it made you feel as if our money is not as good as the other people being served. Even after that I left her a 20% tip since I have been a waitress before and I understand sometimes people can upset staff but I never treated people this way, making them feel forgotten or that they don't deserve good service regardless of your looks/age/class.

Conclusion: If you go to this place, be prepared to encounter bad service if you don't belong to the "status quo".

Will be trying the other locations since this one did not leave a good...

I am very disappointed in the fact that I have to leave such a bad review for another West Texas Chophouse location. I came here with a group of friends, some of whom were from out of town and they really wanted to eat at this restaurant. One of my friends signed in at about 6:30 pm on a Wednesday and was quoted at most one hour. I checked in after 50 minutes with the hostess and she was confused first that we were a party of seven, when in fact we were a party of six and she kept saying that two seated parties had paid and when one of them left, then they would see us AFTER another 25 minutes of waiting. After that conversation, they told us that the table was empty however, they needed to put silverware on the table in order to seat us. I cannot tell you in my many times eating at various restaurants in this and other cities how many times I have been seated at a table without silverware and never has silverware been a reason for my party to not be seated. However at this restaurant, and in this moment, we were absolutely not allowed to sit at a table without silverware. Therefore, we had to wait another 10 minutes and by the time we actually were taken to the table, there STILL wasn’t enough silverware! There was only four silverware settings as opposed to six when they knew very well we were a party of six. After that, our waitress finally came and said that she would bring us waters and then when she did, she then asked if we needed more silverware and we said yes to more settings and I was trying to keep her at the table so that she would take our order, but she ran away to get this extremely urgent silverware. We finally finally got our order in and by the time we actually ate, it was two hours after my friend had checked us in and by that time we had seen many parties come in after us and leave before we were even seated. They seemed to bring out the food very quickly. The waitress briefly apologized for our waiting, and the food did come out very quickly and that leaves me to wonder why we were made to wait for so very long on a Wednesday when not only were we seeing empty tables that would have fit all 6 of us, but parties were coming in well after us being seated before us, being served before us and leaving before we even got our food served to us. This is such a shame because the chophouse had such promise. I just feel like our party was completely forgotten about and all we did was wait patiently for our table, even though we saw there were empty tables that we could have been seated at. This is the last time that I will ever eat at a West Texas chophouse, and I will always refer my friends and family to Great American because there is at least two WT Chophouses in the city that have a Great American restaurant up the street from them and they are far better in their food and service and wait times than the Chophouse has ever been in my experience. Good luck to you if you try...