Cafe Rio Fresh Modern Mexican — Restaurant in Glendale

Tonight I placed an order online, when I arrived they greeted me by letting me know I was early for the order(In an annoyed way), but I told them I’m in no rush at all and acknowledged I was early. The tacos came up 2 minutes later and were the wrong tortilla which isn’t really a big deal but they are also soaked in like pools of grease so when you pick up the taco it just falls apart. I unfortunately didn’t double check the order until I got home and realized this I wasn’t I payed for. So I get back down to my car and drive back, meanwhile I’m calling them trying to get some more tacos going for me on the way. No one answered and I waited 10 minutes on hold. When I show up I ask to swap them out and the employee(seemingly annoyed) says ,” next time try to come back sooner”. Which if they would answer the phone they would have known sooner…. I looked around and there was no line and less than 8 people eating inside so it wasn’t busy. So to me just seems like the people working expect to do nothing at work. The whole time I was extremely nice and not mad at all. But the employees here make you feel like you are bothering them by spending your money there. On top of that the tacos that they replaced them with are pictured below and they were the right tortilla but also just covered in ungodly amounts of grease. Seems like they did it on purpose. I usually like cafe rio a lot but even Taco Bell would have been better tonight :/ the beef also tasted off and had worse...

Cafe Rio is a pleasant surprise for the "Mexican" build your own bowl/burrito/etc. franchise. The food has many more options than Chipotle, the advertising suggests that they make everything from scratch and the tortillas definitely back up those words. A breath of fresh air to eat some Mexican style food with homemade flour AND corn tortillas. The only complaint that I have is their burritos, it seems that they build the burritos to be eaten smothered with a fork and knife and do not fold them to be hand held. My wife picked up the burrito and the entire back side of the burrito fell open. It would be nice if the establishment had their workers fold the burritos to Chipotle standards so the option for hand held eating would be available. Not everyone is sophisticated enough to eat their burritos with silver wear (although every authentic mexican restaurant I've been to, that has been the expectation). Regardless of the efficiency of handheld eating, it was delicious, filling, and good!

The horchata and mint/limeade need some work. Some days the horchata is very watery other days it's way too sweet with little rice and cinnamon flavor. The mint limeade is good but again way too sweet and not enough punch with the lime sourness. The mango lemonade is probably their strongest hand with their beverages as I have not a single bad thing to say about it!

The staff were just there to work so nothing notable to say there. I like the theme of the restaurant as it fits their...

I have been to Café Rio 4 times. First time was lunch with the office, they got my order wrong (I asked for no cilantro, it had cilantro.) Second time, again, I asked for no cilantro but there was cilantro on my food. Third time we ordered out at the office, I mentioned to a coworker that they messed up my order the first two times and was not sure I wanted to try it again. I was convinced otherwise and again they messed up the order. At this point it became an inside joke around the office and every time someone suggested Café Rio everyone would bring up how bad they are at following orders and laugh. Well eventually the fourth time came, it was stated multiple times to not put cilantro on my food and it was even requested that my food be titled / named “No Cilantro” to be sure, and you guessed it they again put cilantro on the food. This of course was the high light of everyone’s day and Café Rio has become the laughingstock of the office. So much so that it is brought up in meetings as a perfect example of a bad example and there is a companywide ban on ordering food from Café Rio in risk that our company is seen to support their customer service ethics. Due to these experiences, I have convinced friends and family to also avoid this company. The market is full of similar companies providing similar menu items. No need to waste time, money, and effort on Café Rio. If I could give them less then 1...