El Patio Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Fresno

We've been visiting Fresno area for a while for medical care at UCSF Cancer Center in Clovis, and looking unsuccessfully for really good Mexican food beyond bland burritos and tacos. We finally received a suggestion for El Patio. Eureka!!!

El Patio is a really cute restaurant, starting with a lovely all-in design and ambience, sort of al fresco, but protected from weather. The service with Maria was personable and friendly, and made us feel quite welcome. The food was splendid, starting with delicious homemade chips and salsa. My Chile Colorado was perfection, rich and yet not so spicy, as noted on the menu, along with my preference of the best corn tortillas I've ever had. My wife had a nicely presented dish that was like a very large shrimp cocktail, but an entirely Mexican approach with a large serving of avocado on top of a generous amount of shrimp. She was in heaven. We finished with their not-too-sweet flan and shared a churro with a caramel-ish sauce, both winners. OMG! El Patio is definitely a must-go place for us on future trips. Future trip: Even better!!! Tacobirria and albondigas, both the best we've had, and filling. One of the special things is presentation most Mexican food is plopped down on the plate and that's it. El Patio makes the extra effort to celebrate their food with attention to how it's plated. Lovely. Service is always personal and friendly. Adriana answered our questions and explained choices eagerly. Can't recommend El...

If I could give zero stars I would for the service. We come in and the older man waitress asked for how many people not even a hello how are yall etc. I told him 4 adults 2 kids he just put the menu on table and left. Didn’t even offer to grab us two high chairs for the kids. I have been planning to come here for a month and I decided to come on my birthday which is today April 17th. He kept walking away or saying hold on it’s gonn take a minute . He was so amargado. And i felt some type of way he didn’t even want to talk Spanish to us. Everytime we asked for something he would just get it and go and not ask anything else before he just walks away. I wanted to learn more about the drinks he had but he just handed the menu and walked away and he looked so annoyed when I asked about the flavors. I would have wanted a waitress to explain the drinks and which drinks people prefer etc. and I had a question about paying after he gave us the bill I asked him do we pay here and he was just walking away. I did see his eyes go to the side as if he did hear me but he came back out after and grabbed the bill and came back out. Like I said I have been planning to come here for a month cause I seen them on instagram but birthday breakfast failed. I won’t come back but hey, they...

I do not understand how this restaurant has so many good reviews. First of all- the vibe was off and terrible. There was a girl singing that sounded good, but the speaker was up so loud I could not hear myself think (1pm in afternoon). Then, we waited for 20 minutes before someone came by and took our order.

If you like margaritas, I hope you don’t like good ones because they don’t have anything other than ‘well’ tequila. Also, I ordered a skinny margarita and the waiter did not know what that was. How do you serve margaritas and not know what a skinny margarita is????

My husband got a michelada that was the size of his head. He said it tasted terrible and hardly had any beer in it. Was filled with tomato juice. He barely drank it at all.

Now we get to the food… we got chicken nachos and 2 chicken tacos.. gross. Chicken was barely edible and the nachos were luke warm. The tacos also had like nothing on them but raw onion and old looking cilantro. The saving grace was the corn tortillas that seemed homemade but hard to tell? It just wasn’t good. Like not at all. We did not finish any of it.

Now to top it all off, I’ve been having aggressive diarrhea for the last 4 hours that I’m going to attribute to this restaurant because I haven’t eaten anything else.

Do...