The Grasshopper Mexican Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Florida

Pros - It's not a scary term - "Tex-Mex". It means great smooth re-fried beans and chilled fresh Guacamole and somewhere is a Chile Con Queso cheese dip. (Here there were none of the tricks to keep old guac green) This is the real deal, the black skinned Tx or Cal Avocado is nothing like the football sized FL one. Flavorful, and if the delicate taste is not enough, there are full bodied salsas to choose from. Mildly hot, quite spicy and VERY spicy. (I mixed mine). Dino, the pleasant owner, must have heard we were new and came to our table to describe his idea for the Grasshopper. 'All here is made after my Grandmother's recipes. Fresh and handmade is what we like and what we serve.' He was right so far. He had served a small dish of the green peppers cheese dip and the loverly guac for us to have as a friendly greeting. Fresh AND tasty. YUM. I ordered the Appetizer that had more of that. My wife was impressed so, that she asked Dino to just recommend her meal. She ended up with what I think was the Alamo Plate. It's like a Puerco Carne Guisada or TENDER Pork Pot Roast and YUMMY gravy. As a dish wrapped in a tortilla, it was good enough to order again tonight. I had the 'sampler' so it had a little of everything except the home style tamale. Sides are the normal rice and re-fried beans, but the rice is really good and has a subtle flavoring. Not like the old overused red rice concoctions like other restaurants. The Modelo beers were almost cold enough for my very picky palate. The nice lady put some aside on ice for me. Thanks, Grasshopper!

Cons - The chips are a little thick and somewhat overcooked. The Cheese Dip is extended a little too much. And that is IT.

I'll make corrections after tonight's meal if need be.

Chips were cooked perfectly tonight. Took a friend who is a picky eater. She was more than pleased. Brought a meal home for the shut in across the street. Smiles there, too.

On the special menu were Poblano Pepper stuffed with any of 4 different kinds of meats or 100% veggie meals. I did the Poblano and it was pretty fair. The dessert we tried wasn't the cheesecake burrito our waitress mentioned but the fried ice cream. It is not Blue bell Ice Cream, so the creaminess and flavor was nothing special. Won't have that again.

We WILL be back. (We saw our server from the expensive Mexican Food place on Lido Key having dinner. He had his whole family there from grandpa to baby. That's always...

Not as good as when it opened. The chips and salsa are still good but I think some of the other elements have suffered. The chunky beef is a little bland but my biggest issue is that they don't serve a crispy chimmichanga. I've talked with the management and have been promised that if I ask specially, I can get it crisp. But really, should that be a special request?? Not in my experience. The primary feature of a chimi is that it is crispy. I may give them one more chance but I think I'm going to be looking for another mexican/tex-mex favorite.

UPDATE 3/8/22: I don't know what changed but we went back recently and were very pleasantly surprised to enjoy a wonderful meal. We've been back twice since and it's consistently been delicious with great, friendly service (Thanks Nadine!). Good job Grasshopper!! UPDATE 6/17/22: Still getting great food and service. Most impressive is that on a busy Friday night, the kitchen gets hot food out fast! Wishing more restaurants could manage that. Update 9/26/22: 'Twas the night before Ian and all through the house, every creature was scurrying and bellies would roar. To Grasshopper we went to see cheery faces and delicious dinners, to hold us over while the winds shuddered our timbers. So fly away Ian! Bother us no more, we want queso and guac and chips galore! PS No tequila was harmed in this review but everything was great! Update 3/17/23: Wonderful dinner tonight! It was a bit quiet being that it is St. Patrick's day but for fun, the management chose to play old school disco and it was a blast! Update 9/4/23: Another great dinner with terrific service and staff! Update 11/22/23: See above, still great! Update 4/25/24: Great dinner tonight! Had the taco platter but with flash fried flour shells and it was fabulous. You...

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The food here is fantastic. The thing that keeps me from providing a 5 star review and appears to need a lot of improvement are the servers. They all seem like they're overworked and none of them smile at all. When one of them was asked for a rag to clean up a sticky mess on the seat before another customer sat down she rolled her eyes and when the customers said thank you, she never replied anything but rolled her eyes again. That's really bad customer service. In fact I am going to knock this from 4 stars to 3 because of that.

Our server was very busy and it was not even busy when we came in. We saw her very few times. She was extremely nice when we did see her and kept the drinks filled but became super rushed when it did get busy.

The food was great. No... The food was fantastic! No... The food was amazingly good. I will definitely come back. Our server, as little as we saw her, was still great. I only wish I would have seen her more.

The tea was great and the desert was just brilliant.

Please work on more training with the servers and probably make sure the servers have tables that are close together rather than separated apart so the customers can see their servers more and this place would be awesome.

Thanks for the great food.

Edit: It has been 3 years since my first review of this place. I've been back several times and the service, when I am alone, is always fantastic 5 star service. The food remains wonderful regardless of the...