El Zarape Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Fort Smith

Add another favorite to the list. The borracho beans great! Some of the best I’ve had. The one cup serving came with the lunch fajitas. I must say I was expecting the lunch portion to be small, but it would have been plenty for two. Why spend the extra money for extra food when you could be adding on a margarita instead. And what fun! The rice came in a pyramid shape. It’s the little things that make the experience. The made from scratch tortillas and guacamole were good. The grilled onions were amazing though. Really good seasoning. The best thing about the lunch fajitas is that they separate the onions from the chicken. I usually eat veggie fajitas and my wife eats chicken fajitas. This makes sorting out a bit easier. We had another fantastic waiter. Still lovin’ this some El Zarape.

Year ago: Carlos and our waitress did and excellent job yesterday. Carlos’ was personable with us and the children, and our waitress was friendly as well. Chips were good. House salsa was okay. I prefer grilled salsa, but this was still good. Not too watery, sticks great to the chips. Ask for the hot salsa though. It’s green and has tomatillos in it for a little bit different flavor. If it’s too hot for you, just mix the two salsas together. The chicken fajitas for 2 was huge. It could have fed all four of us with leftovers to take home. If you have two mega hungry people though, this will do the trick. It comes with two full plates of rice, beans, guacamole, pico, and lettuce in addition to a shared plate of chicken fajitas. The tortillas were good, appearing to be made in house. The kids orders were large as well. No one’s going hungry at El Zarape. The cheese sauce on the kids bean burrito was really good, but it was the waffle fries with spices that were amazing. The extra touch was sending us away with another bag of chips and tub of salsa. It was all good, but my favorites were the guacamole and waffle fries. Nice interior decor, patio, and clean bathrooms. This is now our favorite Mexican restaurant in Fort Smith. Thank you El Zarape, Carlos, and waitress for a...

This restaurant used to be one of the best in town. Now ALL the employees that made it the best it town have moved to a new restaurant called Zapata’s on Rogers ave. I decided to give it a try even after hearing some not so great things about it after the employees moved to the new place. We went on. Friday evening and could not believe how empty the place was. I thought to myself, well at least we will get good service...wrong. First of all they were out of several draft beers, and the one that I finally settled for was brought out in a mug that had strange red speckles all over it and did not appear clean at all. Secondly the cheese dip that we ordered was lumpy because the microwave didn’t heat it enough to melt it apparently, and the flavor was off as well. It took several minutes to have our order taken and when our food finally arrived, it was average at best and the cheese sauce on the entree was cold. We had to get the servers attention to ask for a refill after the glass was left empty for quite some time. We never received a ticket, so we just made our way to the cashier and waited which was also a painfully slow process. Overall not a good experience, and we will likely not ever go back. The only positive thing I can say is that even though the staff was inattentive, they were very friendly. Don’t waste your time, go...

This used to be our favorite place to go but our last visit was so awful that we will never be back. Our waitress kept getting our orders wrong even though she brought two other people over to confirm our orders several times. Due to this the wait time was 45+ minutes, even though there was only one other table in the whole restaurant. By the time we got our food it was cold to the touch. At the end of our dinner when we went to pay for our meals our whole party was overcharged by $10+ each and we were told we couldn’t have a receipt despite paying with cards. We were also told that someone in our party that had left before everyone else, hadn’t paid for a meal despite them actually paying for it. Just to give you an idea the meal that was claimed as not paid for was only $5.99 and we were charged $15. So we were double charged/over charged for our meals. Also my grandmother who is 80 years old asked for a senior discount but was not given one and when asked later why she didn’t receive one the girl at the register rudely said “she didn’t ask for one. But I didn’t charge her for the drink and that’s basically the amount of the senior discount if that makes her feel better.”

This restaurant has unfortunately fallen from grace and with great customer service like this I only see this continuing...