3 Amigos — Restaurant in Elizabeth City

Does this place even read their reviews? We were sat tonight and waited for two others to arrive. They were there in less than 10 minutes. No one acknowledged us or said someone will be with you. We sat for 25+ minutes waiting to get something to drink. Waiter finally comes and we order some waters because we didn’t have an alcoholic beverage menu.

We flag him down after almost 10 more minutes and we get a menu. He comes back and asks if we are ready to order. We proceed to order some adult beverages and he tells us we can’t order that yet he needs to get the food in first cause he’s busy. So we say okay and order the food.

Comes back after another 10 minutes. Takes the drink order. Frozen strawberry margarita, tropical margarita, piña colada and apple martini. Strawberry Margarita was NOT frozen. Piña Colada came in a regular glass and had a ton of whipped cream and was terrible. Apple martini was terrible and the tropical margarita was about the best thing that came out. We wanted to send the piña colada and apple martini back.

Waiter says he can “fix” the apple martini when all she wanted do is swap it for a lemon drop. He brings the same terrible apple martini out. We ask him for the lemon drop….again. He brings that and this thing is in a shot glass and tasted like vodka and lemon peels. Terrible. We were still missing enough flatware for everyone. Sides we asked for at the beginning still missing and every time we try to catch him the first thing he hears we need he’s jetting away from the table and we can’t ask him for everything at once.

We spoke with someone in “management” she was very sweet and we just wanted the bad drinks off the ticket. And she said it wouldn’t be a problem.

1.5 hours in now that our waiters big table left now he wants to start cracking jokes and being attentive, everyone was over it. We get the bill and everything is on one ticket and the bad drinks were still on there. (He never asked how we wanted the bill and he was never at the table long enough for us to tell him) Most of the night it seemed like our waiter didn’t understand us but he would swear he did even though everything was botched and we had to flag down multiple people for things we needed and for missing items.

He brings over a different manager after we told him it was 4 separate bills(again he looked confused) This is where it goes so downhill. We said the drinks are still on there and this “manager” then raises his voice and arguing saying what is he taking off she drank it (we hadn’t realized that our party member had sipped on it a little more cause we couldn’t get the waiter to bring her anything else, ok understandable) but gets very accusatory that we were trying to get over on him and get freebies and that the girl we talked to doesn’t make decisions and literally said she’s no body and HE’S the manager and HE’S not taking anything off (the other drinks were left untouched though) told us we wanted something for free and was extremely RUDE and kept cutting us off mid sentence and when we attempted to ask for a Togo box he starts yelling that he’s not taking the food off without actually using those two ears on that dense skull to hear what we said. Like he really sat there trying to raise his voice at someone. Go yell at your kids not me.

We don’t need to get over on low quality food. The service sucked, the food sucked, the drinks sucked. We said amongst ourselves we would never come back here to which the manager snapped on us and said “Good, do what you want. Don’t come back, go complain somewhere else”. We ended up cancelling the to-go order at the front too. Waiter was okay but the manager was the absolute worst. They think they can talk to people like that because they have a steady clientele that will deal with their...

This restaurant gets a lot of high reviews but not from me. Read on to find out why.

Two arrived for lunch and we were promptly seated. A bowl of chips and salsa arrived within moments. Our server showed a minute or so later and took our drink order: Beer and sweet tea so no reviews of the cocktails.

The ambience is sort of what you’d expect and the menu was extensive. The chips and salsa were ok. Sometimes, Mexican restaurants really miss on the chips but these were good. The salsa, average in taste, medium-low heat.

My sister-in-law ordered off the Lunch Specials menu: #3 One Taco and One Enchilada. I ordered the Fajitas Quesadilla (chicken).

The food arrived within 10 minutes. The plates and food were hot and the portions very generous. So far so good.

My SIL’s plate looked very appetizing and had a nice presentation. My meal came with a cream salad (not Crema). It was just ragged pieces of lettuce with a large dollop of sour cream which was sort of plastered on top of the lettuce as if dropped from a high height.

My SIL said the taco was very good. She liked how crunchy the shell was, commenting it was much better than what she bought in stores. Her enchilada was barely ok.

My Chicken Fajitas Quesadilla was quite bland. It was totally lacking in the mix of flavors a good fajitas plate is known for. I ended up dumping the remaining salsa on top but it really did not help.

We needed to order take-out for my spouse. Our server, who had been attentive up until the meal was served, seemed MIA. He never came back to check on the food or us. It was not very busy. When he finally showed, I ordered the #9 off the Specials menu with some misgivings. She wanted the grilled chicken quesadilla.

The take out arrived pretty fast and I asked for the Check. He pulled it from his pocket but he must have printed it before the third meal was ordered as that meal was missing from the ticket. I asked him to correct it and we were done.

My lovely wife gave the #9 a thumbs-up.

So, it was a mixed visit. The food was hit or miss, but the portions are generous so there is real value at lunch, especially if you order the right thing. The service was good, then it wasn’t.

Would I recommend? Sort of. It was my first visit and we were just passing through so we won’t return again. I hesitate in completely panning a restaurant on just one visit. I will say there are a lot of restaurants in Elizabeth City, and if I were staying here, I’d check out many others first.

Going back to my initial comment, I take any review with a grain of salt. I don’t trust reviewers in general because I’ve been to many “5-star”places, not just restaurants, where my experience doesn’t match up with their experience. I think too many people give average or mediocre experiences a higher rating than deserved. Maybe people are trying to be nice or maybe they had a great experience or maybe they are poor judges. Who knows.

For a heavily reviewed restaurant such as this, I’ll read the lowest reviews first and gloss over the 5-star reviews if there isn’t much to back up the review. So, I try to be through and give an honest impression. I’ve given out several 5-star reviews and a handful of bad ones. This one gets a lot of good reviews so maybe it was an off day for the kitchen. That can happen. But as I said, I’d move on to other options before...

Came in to celebrate my birthday with family tonight. The hostess was okay, we were seated fairly quickly. The issue was with the waiter who lacked real customer service, had more of an annoyed attitude when placing our orders and whenever we requested additional items like appetizers and water. We finally made it through the food. The steaks were supposed to be well done. One was still red, that was okay. We worked around it since one of us was fine with a red steak, so we didn’t bring that up. The waiter never really came to our table after we got our food to check to see if everything was okay, only came back to offer one refill and that was it. As my mother was finishing up her food she realized there was a hair on the edge of her plate, when she lifted the plate, we saw another much smaller hair that didn’t even look like hair from someone’s head. This is NOT the first time for her, her previous experience was similar. When we brought this up with the waiter, he implied that we had purposely placed those hairs by saying, “oh we don’t have women in the kitchen.” So I pointed at the smaller hair and my mother and said, “well she doesn’t have short hair and she’s certainly not a man either.” (If he had stayed I would’ve told them to go ahead and check the cameras, I’m sure they’ve got them). He didn’t say anything, never offered any kind of apology, never made eye contact during the entire course of dinner. We left two of our four meals half finished and the other two nearly finished. I wasn’t going to wait for the tab so I got up to pay, and as we were leaving the kitchen staff was watching us and laughing as we were paying. The lady at the register tried to rectify and ask the hostess to apply a discount, the hostess wasn’t very pleasant about the fact and never really bothered to further check why or what was happening. That was nice of the cashier to at least try since I never asked her for any kind of discount, I only asked that a previous to-go order be canceled. I wanted to pay and get out. Honestly, a very disappointing experience, considering the owners & family are very nice people. It just seems the staff doesn’t really reflect that customer service aspect of it. Overall, terrible experience for someone who came to celebrate their birthday. Worst $100+ dollars I’ve ever spent. Don’t...