El Tapatio Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Florida

Conveniently located by my house in Vero Beach, my family and I recently had an opportunity to dine at El Tapatio Mexican Grill for the first time. A new restaurant - we had to check it out. Besides, we do enjoy a good Mexican meal once in a while.

Crammed into a booth built for four, my youngest daughter had to sit on the end, on a chair added to the table. Mikayla was our server and it was dinner for five - two adults and three children. Tortilla chips and salsa were quickly served.

Kids chicken tenders and kids cheeseburger for my twins, a super burrito for my oldest daughter, and the combo chicken/steak fajitas for the adults at the table. Water for all and a Sprite for my son. Dinner check totaled $42.15 before tip.

Mikayla was polite enough and kept our drinks full. She even replenished the tortilla chips upon request. Biggest problem with dinner, you ask? The combo chicken/steak fajitas for two. The meal was served "out of order" with the sizzling fajita portion of the meal served a full five minutes before the beans/rice/side portion of the meal. By the time the sides arrived, the sizzling platter had lost all of it's sizzle and was starting to get cold.

My daughter loved her super burrito. It arrived hot and was more than enough to fill her up. No complaints from my twins on the kids chicken tenders or cheeseburger. Plenty of food on the table - no complaint on the serving portions. Enough food that some had to be taken home.

Small and cramped restaurant - the place was packed upon arriving. Like us, many of our neighbors were checking out the new place in town.

El Tapatio Mexican Grill in Vero Beach receives 3 stars for this particular visit for the reasons stated above. While the "new" restaurant in town, they should have it down pat by now and serve meals all at once and "together" as I mentioned about the fajitas above.

William E. Lewis Jr. Vero...

Place is always packed - if they're open, they're busy, so make sure you realize that before you order or show up for a table.

The food is great and the portions are enormous. The quality of the proteins used to be a bit better before all the crazy inflation but is still decent and cooked well despite how busy it always is.

The beer on tap, for such a small place, is really fresh - I always mess with the XX amber.

The staff are friendly and always seems to be doing their best. I imagine its the same for the people workin in the back so I always give a 25%ish tip.

They should probably have at least one more person working the FoH; a bus boy, a food runner; something. I get that sometimes it can be a hard spot to fill, or that no one (servers, owners) would want that extra person, but I feel like they are needed.

My favorite dishes are the fajita combo and the pollo mole. The only thing I don't enjoy at El Tapatio are the pinto (refried? They aren't) beans. The first few times I went there I ate a couple bites but honestly they taste like wallpaper paste. No seasoning - a mouthful of flavorless starch. A few months ago though I realized they have regular stewed black beans, which also are great lol. I really think they should rework or just scrap the regular bean recipe, even if its from abuela.

Dont miss out on...

The food was great but the service really lacked. But only seemed to be our server. Other servers were attentive and efficient. But I’m rating our experience specifically and it was lacking. Seated at a dirty table we waited until it finally got wiped. Ignored for the first 5 minutes. She brought chips and salsa no napkins or silverware. Our waitress asked us what we would like to drink. Brought us our drinks then asked what we would like to eat. We told her you haven’t given us the menus yet. In the meantime, we watched others get excellent service. After finally getting menus and ordering, our food came but we had no silverware. As she was walking away we said we don’t have silverware or napkins. Our waitress never checked back with us. However we could hear the other 2 servers asking their costumers how was their food. When we flagged her down for a soda, it was forgotten and we had to flag her down again. Most of the attention we got was from other servers. Ours disappeared for long periods in the back while we saw the others successfully juggling phone orders and dine-in orders without an issue.

It may seem unfair to judge the entire place by our server but that was our specific experience. The rating would have been lower had it not been for the other servers trying to fill the gaps and the quality...