Vaqueros Mexican Grille — Restaurant in Gladstone

Let me start by staying I've been to this restaurant many times and the food and service have kept me coming back. With that being said I've had two bad experiences with the same bar tender. When asked what her name was she wouldn't give it but the manger said her name was Lily. Lily is the worst bartender I've ever encountered and I've had quite a few over my life. When I first sat down it took Lily forever to even ask what I wanted but had time to visit with her friends at the bar. I was a distraction from visiting with her friends. Finally, I asked what happy hour specials were, Lily lifted a mug and said "these are $1.99 for two more minutes" I said what are those? House margaritas. Ok, anything else? Drafts are $1.50. I ordered a draft beer. In front of me were chips leftover from a previous customer and the bar needed to be wiped down. In between chatting with friends again, Lily finally brought my chips and salsa and picked up a chip from the mess in front of me with her finger, guess she was too busy to wipe the bar off 🤷 I got Lily's attention again from chatting with friends and ordered a margarita they have on special on Tuesdays, she immediately poured one and I believed it to be the house margarita. Questioned Lily about the margarita and she got defensive and stated it wasn't a house margarita, even tho it looked and tasted like one. Not my first house margarita there. Lily did not offer to make a new one or resolve anything. Then, Lily went back to chat with friends. When Lily came to ask if we wanted food I stated that I wasn't happy about the margarita and didn't want it and wanted my tab for my $1.50 draft. Words were exchanged and Lily brought her friends into that exchange. Lily is not a nice person and shouldn't be working at a public place serving customers. Yes, Lily I was the customer, you are the worst bartender I've EVER had!!! The manager got involved and offered us a table in the back while Lily and "her gang" were verbally attacking my son. We left because of Lily and her lack of professionalism. My son and I will not go back as long as Lily is the bartender. Seems pretty bad that one bartender named Lily could cause a regular customer, that even got a $100 gift card for Christmas not to return. Lily has the kind of personality that I wouldn't want her to serve me anything for fear of her putting something in it. I've met the owner a couple of times and have so enjoyed his establishment, but the bartender with no name Lily has changed that. So, don't EVER sit at the bar with Lily...

I don’t know what has happened to this restaurant, I have been coming here for years and today I had probably my worst restaurant experience ever. I would give zero stars if that was an option. We were seated and had chips and salsa placed on our table fairly quickly, but it took a fairly long amount of time to get our drink order taken and brought to us. Our food order was taken, we ordered appetizers and entree’s. We waited 40 minutes for our food, server passed our table multiple times and we tried to get her attention when we never got our appetizers and were waiting so long. She finally brings out one of the two appetizers and our entree’s(one was missing an item), everything was cold and dried out on top. We asked for the missing items and why our appetizers weren’t served before the meal. The answer was “You didn’t tell me you wanted them before your other food.” I asked the server to have the manager come talk me, after ten minutes I asked another server to get the manager, he came out about 5 minutes later. We told him about everything I have listed and that our chips and drinks needed refills and couldn’t get the server to do that either. He took our food to get new food and got our chip and drink refills back to us about 10 minutes later. The entree’s were brought back out about 5 minutes after the refills. The plates were extremely hot, the food looked dried out and appeared to have been put in the microwave to warm them up. I told the manager our entree’s were missing an item. No one ever stopped back by our table. The food was not good at all, we just picked at it because we were hungry. We sat there 30-35 minutes waiting for someone to come to our table, I finally got up and was looking for an employee, found one and asked them to ask the manager to come out. We told him our issues and showed him that we had only ate a few bites and the taco and tostada shells that were stale. Also let him know how long we waited for a check that never came. He told us he would take the food off the ticket, then brought us a ticket for some of the food we couldn’t eat. I am not a person that complains about everything and expects everything comped for a small problem, but today I don’t believe we should have to pay. In the end, he did comp our ticket and we left a table full of terrible food and stopped at a drive thru. I would have much rather preferred a good meal with good service that I would have generously tipped. This place has lost my business and I will let my friends know how bad this...

I'll start with this, we've eaten here quite a few times and always thought they had really good margaritas and food. Never had a bad experience there UNTIL today. I am not sure what's going on but it is not good and service stinks. Ordered drinks, I ordered a regular lime margarita on ice, the waiter asked me if I wanted "the 1800 special" I asked if that was the tequila and he said yes, so I said "sure". It came in a regular glass (not a stemmed glass) with a slice of lime, orange and pineapple on the rim with a maraschino cherry plopped in the middle. I knew right away it was not what I wanted, tried to convey that to our waiter and he said this is the 1800, I explained to him that I wanted a lime margarita not a tropical flavored one. Needless to say he never got it, AND would not just take it away until after I took a sip and told him "no, I don't like it", he then said he'd take it back and get me the lime margarita that I originally asked for. It came back out in the same glass with no fruit on the rim and he said it was the lime "house" margarita. Due to the language barrier I believe he just wasn't getting it. I took a sip and it barely tasted any different, I think he took all the fruit out of it and threw a little more margarita mix into the glass because I almost immediately started getting heartburn (which I get with OJ or pineapple juice). Then our food came, and it just got so much worse. My fish tacos smelled and tasted terrible, my husband's food was also not tasting very good but he couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong with it. Needless to say I didn't eat anything off my plate and we didn't see our waiter again until he brought the bill. He asked if we wanted to go containers and we said absolutely not. He didn't ask what was wrong, no manager came to try and figure out how to make things right, something has happened since we were last here a couple months ago. This was our go-to Mexican restaurant, but not anymore! I have included pics but these are of the food we LEFT on the table. We also didn't finish our drinks. It was absolutely awful! The chips and salsa were the only thing that has remained the same and they were very tasty, but not worth our $60+ bill when we left all our food and drinks there because it was...