El Charro Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Franklin

This place charges extra for everything, but had Very good food. We are always scouting for the perfect plate of nachos. Business has been hard for restaurant owners and can understand if they charge extra for a small bowl of jalapeños on the side. The real kicker for us came when we went to check out. We all understand that the bill spits out of the credit/debit machine, it asks for a place to leave your tip, and that is perfectly fine. We are usually at least 20% people and enjoy great service. However, keep your eye open when you review your bill while entering your tip amount. This place actually charges you an extra percentage of your bill because of the fact you use a card instead of cash. In todays day and age, when very few people use cash, the restaurant should not pass the fee on directly to the customer. The prices already reflect inflation, but to be so cheap to punish the customer into paying extra on top of already inflated prices just so they can make the menu look cheaper is kind of lame. This is the first time I have seen this convenience fee imposed on a transaction receipt, so upon asking what the fee was on the bill, the cashier pointed to a sign on the wall that said basically, if you use a card, you pay more. Who knows, maybe there is a new law or a local law allowing convenience fees. If this is the new norm, that really stinks as cash is obsolete for a lot of people. So, iIf you see this on your bill, that’s what it’s for. It was an enjoyable lunch though....

This is the first time in my life I feel it's necessary to leave a one star review. I took my family there for dinner. My kids ordered the ACP. It was decent. My daughter didn't get any cheese sauce on hers so we asked for some. No biggie. I ordered the carne asada, which is my go to plate whenever I go out for Mexican. It looked a little off when I got it, but I don't care too much about looks as long as it tastes good. I don't even know how to properly describe how bad it was. I took one bite and sent it back. The closest description I can give is, the cook took packaged lunch meat roast beef and pan fried it until it got dried out. Yes it was that thin. I've eaten carne asada hundreds of times and have never seen anything like this. I decided to give the enchiladas a try, they were also very bland, but I was hungry and just choked them down. One of the enchiladas was just filled with refried beans. That was also a first for me lol. I just wanted to get out of there so I asked for the bill. So the cheese sauce that we asked for(that was missing from my daughter's ACP) was charged to us for $3.50. I asked the waitress to take it off the bill. She had to get the manager who I ended up in argument with because he wouldn't take it off. Luckily I had cash on me and left exact change minus the charge for the cheese sauce and handed the waitress her tip separately. This place should be ashamed to call what they serve...

Arrived at the restaurant at 930 pm with my wife. We were seated immediately given a basket PTO of chips and salsa and asked for our drink order. We both ordered sweet tea. We received the tea and it was very light colored and tasted almost unsweetened. The server said that they had just made a fresh batch and replaced our teas but it was the same. I had to ask for some artificial sweetener to be brought out just to try to sweeten it enough to be able to drink it. The chips were completely cold and stale and the salsa was bland at best. We ordered some cheese dip because the salsa was so bad and what we received was so runny that it looked like it had been watered down. Even toward the end of our meal the cheese dip had gotten cold but was still just as runny. It had not thickened at all. The entree was slightly better as far as flavor but the beef and steak in the enchiladas were very dry. We chose this restaurant based on the Google rating of 4.5 out of 5 but our experience was very poor and disappointing. The service was very good but bottom line if the food isn’t worth eating pleasant service is not going to fix it. For quality is the most important aspect of the dining experience. I would rather have great food and poor service than the other way around. Otherwise you will never have more than one time customers unless the community lowers their standards and...