Uncle Julio's Frontenac — Restaurant in Frontenac

This was an absolute disaster. I should have gone by the numerous poor reviews regarding service and food. However, my friends still wanted to give it a shot. Big mistake..

On the menu they had many " signature Margaritas." It's specifically stated that some were made with lime juice. Not sour mix. I inquired about this specifically with our waiter who insisted that it was lime juice and I said that's what I want. I do not want any mix... He said no problem. Of course, when the drinks came out there was way more liquid in the glass than possible if they had been using lime juice. I inquired about it that it being so big and he cluelessly said, yeah. I think they may have overpoured you. Well. It wasn't very strong at all and I found out shortly thereafter that they indeed were using sour mix, not the lime juice that was stated on the menu. The manager on duty who we spoke with was nice and apologetic, but yet he said that they were aware that the menu said lime juice but they had changed the recipe a few weeks ago and just didn't have time yet to update the menus... That's inexcusable. Change the menus and then change the recipe but don't change the recipe and not change the menus. And furthermore, if you're going to change the recipe and a customer inquires specifically about an ingredient, he or she should have the correct answer. This happened with two of our drinks. As to the food quality, the guacamole was ok...The color was off, which explains the extremely bland flavor, tasting mostly of onion. The cheese dip tasted like any from a can. And the chips had a very foul aftertaste. Definitely need to change the oil.

Now it gets better. Already frustrated with the hall drink experience, I really didn't want to stay and order food because I didn't really trust anything at this point. Well I ordered at the insistence of my companion, and what I ordered was supposedly six jumbo shrimp stuffed with cheese and jalapeno and then wrapped and bacon. These were supposed to come with grilled peppers and onions, etc etc on a skillet similar to how they serve fajitas. When the food was delivered out came three shrimp on a plate. I again asked are young naive waiter, I believe this is supposed to have six shrimp and he quickly said "No, I don't think so. " So I got a menu out. He didn't return for a while and I asked another server for the GM or the manager. He came over and I said do you see what they brought me and do you see what I ordered? This one's on the waiter as well as the kitchen staff. The waiter absolutely knew that I wanted the six shrimp dish because he asked me, " Do you just want the shrimp or did you want the one that comes with the steak and chicken. ". Well that has a different name so if I wanted that one I would have ordered the name of that entree... Argh. The GM immediately realized that they brought out the wrong dish. And once again apologized. But by this time I was just so over the place I wanted to leave. You would think after the big screw up with the drinks they would have made sure that the dinner order was correct but they were unable to even bring out the correct meal. My companions meal was correct, however the fish in the fish tacos was overly cooked, probably in the same oil or different oil. Oil that's even more old and had a very foul oil taste. I would not recommend the fish tacos. I would not recommend this place at all. For the prices they are charging, they really need to change their game. It's no wonder on Yelp that over 35% of their reviews are one and two stars. Bad service and bad food. Not a good...

I attempted to dine here for a birthday celebration for a party of eight people (not 16 or 20 people as we weren't a very large group). We were looking to eat on their patio as it was a very nice evening. When walking into the restaurant we could see there were multiple tables available on their patio as there were only a couple of groups of people seated out there. We had a reservation which didn't really seem to be needed as there were only a few tables being served on the inside also. The Hostess was extremely rude and tried to tell us it would be two hours to eat on their patio which seemed crazy with all the open tables. She tried to say they didn't have a table for eight even though it would have been quite easy to put a couple of tables for 4 together and seat us on their patio for our reservation right away, but she kept insisting it wasn't available (again extremely rude the entire time). We then decided to go ahead and eat indoors. The atmosphere inside is very plain and doesn't have any Mexican restaurant vibe to it at all. We were seated right next to their kitchen even though there was 80% of the seating available as they weren't very busy for a Sunday evening. We proceeded to wait for approximately 15 minutes without a single server coming over to the table to give us any chips and salsa or take a drink order. We finally asked a waitress if there was someone that will be waiting on us. She said she would be our waitress and would be with us shortly. She was the only server in this area even though there were still plenty of empty tables around us. Again another five or so minutes go by with her still not coming over to get us chips and salsa and maybe some waters. Totally ridiculous! At this point we decided as a group to just get up and leave due to this extremely poor and unacceptable service! This would have been my first time dining in this restaurant but I will not be going back. I have never been to a restaurant with such poor and rude service. They didn't even try and apologize when they saw I walking out. They are obviously severely understaffed and the staff they do have are not pleasant at all. I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone even though I have never eaten here. We ended up going to Amigos in Kirkwood and had a great meal with a nice server. They (Amigos) have a great Mexican vibe atmosphere and the food and service were excellent! (Plus they were able to seat us on their patio with no issues). There are many other good Mexican restaurants to patronize rather than this one (Caretta's, Rosalita's, Hacienda, and Amigos to name a few). They seem to have a real snooty "Plaza Frontenac" vibe to them and it didn't surprise me that they weren't very busy. This chain restaurant does not have any kind of authentic Mexican restaurant feel to it and it will hopefully not be around for long. I will...

Made a reservation to celebrate my daughter-in-law's 42nd birthday because Uncle Julio's has been a family favorite for many years. See if you can tell what was show-stopping WRONG with last night's service:

7:00 pm Party of six arrives for dinner with a 7 pm reservation. 7:20 pm Party of six finally seated (20 minutes late) 7:30pm First contact with our server, drink orders taken with request for waters all around (no chips, salsa, or water yet) (10 minutes from being seated to seeing our server) 7:35 pm served with bar drinks and chips/salsa; still no water for our table (including two grankids aged 8 and 11). 7:38 pm Water arrives, orders taken. Tableside guac requested with our order. 7:50 pm We needed refills for chips, salsa, water, drinks. Tableside guac delivered, but had to wait longer for more chips and there were no individual appetizer plates for food. 8:20 pm Still no main course food service (an hour after being seated!) 8:25 pm Some of our food arrives; many meals incomplete (e.g. chicken fajitas with chicken only, no tortillas, no cheese, veggies, sour cream, etc) When the food arrived it was wonderful, the wait for food/drink was unacceptible. 8:30 pm The rest of our food arrives with an apology for poor service and a promise to comp us with $50 off. Thank you for that, but too little, too late. Asked for an iced tea refill. 8:35 pm Received an ice water instead of iced tea because "a new pot was being brewed." 8:51 pm Paid our bill and asked for take home boxes 8:53 pm Iced tea refill arrives with left-over boxes as we were preparing to leave.

Total time for our experience: 1 hour, 53 minutes spent mostly waiting for seating (20 mins), food (1 hour), and service (sporatic and infrequent). We are aware that our server Kyra (friendly and apologetic, but not very attentive to our table) was burdened with an adjacent table of 10 or 12 who seemed demanding and requested separate checks.

Here was the info on our receipt: Reference: 2/22/2025 20:50:59, Table 44/1 8/80048, MID: 7675882, TID: 1759894, SEQ: 086969

Bottom line: the last two out of three visits to Uncle Julio's have been negative experiences for my family; the third was outstanding (I wish they all could be that way). When I asked my eight year old grandson what he would do differently if he managed this restaurant, he said, "shut down until we figure out how to do it right." I applaud his assessment. We will not be back...