Joe T. Garcia's — Restaurant in Fort Worth

Welcome to beautiful dissatisfaction!

Joe T Garcia's is one of the most relaxing, beautiful locations that you'll never return to. The restaurant is an Instagram visit for white women with fake lips (of which you'll see plenty) who've never had decent meal due to chasing trends rather than good food, but I'm not here to lambaste them the whole time, they don't deserve it... though they are keeping this place in business.

Atmosphere: This restaurant is a beautifully maintained, lush garden that also happens to serve something resembling food. It is brick, stone, tile, fern, trees, bushes, flowers, birds, sun, and shade. It's the kind of place I would expect in the caribbean that's 200 years old and a treat to find on vacation. Instead, it's in fort worth.

Service: I'm going to include the wait with the service, as it was half of our experience. We arrived at 11:50 for brunch Sunday and joined the line. It was hot, but the restaurant left coolers with water bottles for everyone in the line, and fans that weren't on. We were taken inside at 12:50, an hour after we got in line. Our waitress was wonderful, attentive, quick, experienced, and went above and beyond to provide us the best visit possible. She addressed and solved a majority of our concerns, such as dirty glasses and silverware, and... we'll get to the rest. She was wonderful!

Food: What a catastrophe. I'll go item by item to describe what we survived.

We got a chicken quesadilla as an appetizer. It was hot, fresh, and...was ok, but someone forgot the seasoning. It was palatable with an open mind and the sour cream brought with it, but subpar compared to every other Mexican restaurant I've had. I can (and frequently do) make better at home. A sad beginning.

We ordered the cheese dip (not queso) and were served warmed cream of chicken soup. I should've known at this point, but I stayed.

For entrees, I had the Chorizo y Papas con huevos. For the uninitiated, that's scrambled eggs and potatoes with chorizo, and it's one of my basic go-tos for new restaurant visits due to its simplicity. After all, how hard is it to screw up scrambled eggs? It's pretty hard, but Joe T Garcia's sure managed it! I'll go into this later, but for almost $18, I expect a generous serving of scrambled eggs, beans, rice, tortillas, and anything else my heart desires. Instead I got a plate of 70% beans and a sad collection of over scrambled, flavorless eggs with slices of old soggy potato mixed in. What an abomination. At a typical local Mexican restaurant, huevos con chorizo is spicy, flavorful, rich, beautifully offset with rice and beans and an absolute delight, yet Joe T Garcia managed to turn it into a small pile of 3 day old eggs and limp taters.

My wife had half beef half chicken fajitas. Hands down the worst fajitas I've had in my life. The intended flavor of the chicken would be teriyaki, and the beef... probably standard beef fajita flavoring, but intentions aside, the flavor amounted something similar, but rinsed with water, or maybe left in a bucket of water, which is probably where the flavor is now. And at a whopping $28, I expected more fajita vegetables than a single spoonful. Maybe 10 slices between the onions and peppers combined, also poorly seasoned. The rice was overcooked and soggy. Allow me to mention, no cheese or sour cream included.

I actually couldn't tell you what our friends had, as it was a mystery to everyone involved. Whatever it was included two sad pieces of beef soaked in salsa with beans. No idea. I didn't try it, but the faces made in front of the plate were unpleasant and most was left uneaten, so take that as you will.

Pricing was absurd and 20% higher than 4 months ago. See pictures. They only take cash? Not sure what the restaurant is a front for, but weird.

Someone mentioned it's all original recipes for the food, but they should hire a chef that uses actual spices. And someone who knows what queso is. Take pictures for Instagram and never come back. Or just go to the...

I'm from the Ft Worth area, I was born and raised there, so I know the history of Joe T Garcia's. I was back in the Stockyard area this past Saturday and took my girlfriend, because she wanted to experience Joe T's. The line for the outdoor patio seating was extremely long, so we opted to sit inside the expansive restaurant. While waiting in line for the restaurant, we met another couple and opted to sit and eat with them, so as to not waste a table that sat 6 people but would only be occupied by 2. We enjoyed our visit with, and we made it very clear to the wait staff that we would be ordering on separate tickets. We just happened to order the same meal on the menu, to be shared between each couple. They brought the food out as if we were a family. They put the nachos for BOTH couples, on the same plate, but didn't explain this to us until we inquired about the other couples' nachos. They made it very obvious that they were upset for having to make things right. They did the same thing for the rest of the order; all 4 tacos were on the same plate. The beans and rice were all on the same plate along with the guacamole. Needless to say, it was very frustrating that they "either didn't care what we had already explained to them, or they simply weren't listening". The atmosphere was extremely loud; we found ourselves shouting to converse with each other and the food was very mediocre. I'm talking, sub-par. It was definitely NOT what all it had been hyped up to be, or what I remembered as a young man growing up near the Stockyards. I was told a lot of the locals don't even like to eat there anymore because of the huge crowds, long waits and the sub-par food. They're willing to "leave it up to the tourist" to enjoy. One last thing, the huge restaurant has a CASH ONLY policy. Period. They don't take any credit cards. The have an ATM machine "conveniently on their premises", with which you can withdraw some cash to pay for your food, but instead of them waving the usage fee, they hit every customer up for an additional $2.50 fee. Why wouldn't this fee be waived since it's their "cash only" policy and just use the ATM as a convenience for the customers? Been there, done that, and am...

It is easy to see why there is a wide spectrum of review scores with Joe T Garcia's. A lot matters where you get seated, length of wait time and your expectations of what will delivered.

First off, the "only accepts cash" requirement is not convenient for many, but the positive side is the waiters don't have to report or pay taxes on cash tips. And going there people plan ahead by having cash to pay the bills.

The limited menu with family style must be something you want to have and for those like us with a party of 15 this worked out perfectly.

Mexican food taste in DFW is all over the board with some people loving Tex-Mex, others wanting more authentic "Mex-Mex" food and others who come from places like San Diego where the "Baja Style of Mexican food is delicious and these folks most often are disappointed at DFW Mexican restaurants. If you know coming to Joe T's you are going to get tacos, enchilada's with a lot of cheese and fajitas (with both corn and flower tortilla's) you will be satisfied with the food and feel you got what you expected. If you want Mexican food that includes items like Chile Relleno, Carne Asada, taquitos with fresca and guacamole then this is NOT the restaurant to go to.

What you do get at Joe T's is beautiful gardens surrounding two main water features. The best table in the house looked to be P5, but that would depend on the sun location. Any of the tables right on the patio pool are the best in the house. But you can't make reservations and where you sit is "luck of the draw." If you needed to wait 10-20 minutes extra to get a P table next to the pool it seems worth it.

But for a party of 15 you get what you can get and it won't be in a premium location. What makes a big difference in warm weather is being near one of the big air blowers and plenty of umbrellas.

We got exactly what we wanted for our party of 15 which included 10 kids ages 4-12. The food variety was sufficient and we order enough that everyone left feeling they needed to loosen...