Garibaldi's Restaurant Elko — Restaurant in Elko

Been coming here for about a year. Always good food and always good service. Until 8-18-23.

The restaurant was full but we were seated promptly. Our server, Kelsey took our drink order, chips were served, and then she took our meal order. My wife had chicken taco salad and I get what I always get, carne asada. I asked her if I could get a cooked onion which I've had on my plate in the past a few times but not all the time. She said, "The long onion?" I said, "Yes".

Kelsey served our meal, we asked for another basket of chips and then proceeded to eat. I did not get a cooked onion but instead had sliced cooked onions on top of the carne asada. My carne asada was well done and tasted like shoe leather. Which made me realize that Kelsey never asked how I wanted it cooked. I always get it rare and it has great flavor that way. All of the servers I've had ask how I want it cooked. Also, my wife's iced tea tasted like water and her chicken was extremely dry.

Mid way through our meal, the restaurant cleared out to about 1/3 capacity. We continued with our meal, waiting for Kelsey to bring us more chips but she never came to our table. She had no problem chit chatting in Spanish with the tables around us that had Mexican families. Not once did she ever come over to refill our empty drinks or ask about our meal. We eventually finished and were waiting patiently when Gisselle hurriedly came over and dropped a ticket on our table, without saying a word. Nobody asked if we wanted dessert, offered to refill our drinks, or ask how our meal was.

When we went up to pay, Gisselle asked, "How was everything?" I said, "Not good. We had horrible service." She then laughed at us. I said, "I'm not kidding. This isn't a joke. We come here often and had terrible service." She then abruptly left to go get a pen so we could sign our receipt. I left a zero tip for Kelsey since she didn't do anything to deserve a tip.

This kind of behavior from the staff is appalling. Instead of laughing at us, Gisselle could have offered to get a manager. If she is the manager, shame on her. As for Kelsey, we have no idea why she ignored us after she brought our meals but was friendly with Mexicans. Is it racism?

Additionally, the bus boy, (young man with high pitched voice) was doing an excellent job. He was very watchful over his area and quick to clear tables.

I've always given five star reviews for Garibaldis on Yelp and this will be my first one star review. I don't see any reason to return to this restaurant if we are going to be...

Disappointing. Service was good, but the food was disappointing. The fish tacos were filled with greasy bits of fish like substance. It had very little flavoring, just as other people described. The crab burrito was fair but the green sauce helped save it from complete disappointment. The fried ice cream was the saddest part. The ice cream was crystallized, the corn flakes were completely soft and stale. How this was simultaneously possible, I don't know, but it was. Clearly it was fried last month and then wrapped in foil and stored in the freezer and then served with RediWhip. The server was really nice, and it wasn't her fault the food sucked. And let's not start with the woman who was vacuuming every 10 minutes. Literally she vacuumed before we got our meal, she vacuumed while we were eating and then in the end while we were trying to pay our bill. We got to the restaurant 2 hours before they closed and were there for an hour. So it seems like it was a little early to be vacuuming. And it was really noisy. Unless you have previous experience here and it's been good and you know what you're getting into, I would pass on this restaurant and find...

I'm reluctant to just give a two star rating because I feel that the help really wanted to please. Unfortunately the food was not up to anything more than two stars, except the fried ice cream for dessert, which was super. Between the four of us, the other three had the taco salad which they found really blah, lacking in flavor and without anything special. Even it's size was on the small side for the money. I ordered the carnitas de res, a different take on carnitas which are typically made with pork. I decided to go ahead and give their beef version a try. It was disappointing, more like beef fajitas without the vegetables. The meat was plentiful but tasteless and rather tough, and no real flavors that stood out. They did give me plenty of tortillas and the rice and beans were good, but that's not much consolation on the whole. Pricing was about what I'd expect for this cuisine. Parking was plentiful and as I said, the staff was courteous and professional. I'd really like to give two and a half stars since we had good service, but the food is the reason you go to a restaurant. I hope their other dishes are better than...