La Casa Dorada Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Gibsonville

Place was empty. Completely empty. Well, except for our party of 6 and random people that wandered in to pick up to-go orders. Our waiter seemed entirely confused about the menu... For example, when he took our drink order, I asked for Horchata, which was on the menu, but they didn't have it. He told me they haven't done the paperwork yet to renew their liquor license, its been expired over a month. I said ok, but do you have Horchata? 'No, we don't have a liquor license.' Horchata is not liquor. It is sweet cinnamon flavored rice water. Its white like milk. 'So you want milk? We don't have milk.' (facepalm) Finally a man I assumed to be the manager said they didn't have it, just the sodas and sweet tea. Sweet teas all around. We were asked if we wanted lemon, but everyone got lemon regardless of preference. We ordered queso, which was SUPER runny, and literally nothing but watered down melted cheese, no peppers or anything. My husband asked for the hottest sauce they had. They brought the house hot sauce and when my husband said it wasn't hot, they just watered it down with other hot sauces (which were milder) because they didn't know how to make it spicer. We also requested mild salsa no less than 3 times and didn't receive it until after our waiter cleared the dinner plates. None of the wait staff seemed to be familiar any of the dishes, or how to pronounce them... For my main dish, I ordered Yolandas (typo on the menu, so it read 'yoandas'). At a base level, this dish is always shredded chicken rolled in corn tortillas with some type of house sauce. I've seen spicy verde, sweet verde, spicy red, mild red, and sweet red. Even a mole once. I order this dish everytime I see it, namely because house sauce makes the experience different in each restaurant, a kind of culinary adventure. I was sad to end up with 2 regular chicken enchiladas and 1 cheese enchilada, mild red sauce. Everyone's meal was wrong. Steak and shrimp fajitas came out as a steak with shrimp, all the 'cream salads' were wrong or missing. The waiter didn't know which dishes came with tortillas and which didn't. Another dish, on the menu, said it had queso sauce. The waiter took it back, but the chef insisted it did not. The dish never got any sauce. Sadly, even though one of our waiters was insanely cute, it did not make up for the missed opportunity to salvage the night with a 27oz...

This place is absolutely horrible I use to work there the Mexican young guy that Would be there everyday morning and night Monday thru Saturday Mauricio Aretga the Owner paid me 6 . 50 an hour from 10 am to 9pm at night he treated me so bad he would call me names he would tell me I would be a loser in life that I would never make it in life I swear to my god everything I’m saying is true he would pay me 60 a day for the whole day ‘! I was only 17 now I’m 18 ! He would make me wash dishes And bus tables and close two sections down at the same time for only 60 bucks the whole day he would some times spit on ppls food on there drinks he has ants crawling on the food in the back coackroaches the cook doesn’t wash his hands he doesn’t use gloves if he drops food of the plate he picks it up and serves it still and also i would get paid tips I just looked like a server and he would say if they ask u if u the server say yes even though I’m not so he would get tips the customers would give me the tips and he would always take em from me I would tell him but they liked the way I served them he would say idont care give me my tips that’s not how u get paid if not u will not get a check I swear it would make me feel bad this is my a joke he would drink on the job he would serve alcohol...

After standing there for 15 mins my family decided to seat ourselves once we seated we waited another 20 mins for the waiter to say "sorry we are out of food, you'll need to leave now" seriously? Yes, he said that. I replied back and said don't you need to put a sign on your door or something? He states, "yes, I'll turn the lights off" Dear Restaurant Owners, if you are expecting a large crowd in your community due to a very popular event such as Lighting of the Greens then you should know to repair for this. If you are expecting 300 people you do not prepare for 301. After tonights event I'm pretty sure you just lost a lot of customers. Needless to say we were not the only customers this happened too so, after this poor experience we walked back up the street to Reno's (which happens to be a normal restaurant for us) where they had plenty of great food and a very friendly staff as always. The owner of Reno's even came by our table to check on us and of course we let him know that we was grateful that he had prepared properly for tonights...