Taqueria Mexico — Restaurant in Harker Heights

Here’s my dilemma: we’ve been to taqueria many, many, many times and absolutely loved everything about it. The servers were great and friendly and the food was amazing. However, our last visit didn’t end too well. My kids and I went with a friend and her kids. A usual outing there to eat. We arrived about 10 minutes earlier than her and were seated and received our drinks and chips as usual. When she arrived we were quickly greeted again for their drinks and more chips, because you always eat yourself full of those when you’re waiting for your food. Our server comes back for our meal order and was very nice and accommodating through our questions. We ordered our food and continued to chat and talk about ‘normal mom’ stuff with kids. We sat a while. Talked a while. And started to notice that we’d been there longer waiting on our food. In fact, 30+ minutes we waited on our food. Not normal for this restaurant but being that it was a Friday night. We knew it was busier. So we waited still. And waited. Then finally asked another server to please check, thinking maybe our order got lost in the shuffle. About 5 minutes later, the gentleman came back and said our food would be arriving shortly minus the two quesadillas that were orders because “they aren’t ready”. I’m thinking that's odd, but thank him none the less. Our server comes out with our food maybe two minutes after and we acknowledge that two of the kids meals aren’t ready. We’re all confused but then the plates suddenly appear. One order is wrong and BOTH were cold. Like they had been sitting for quite a while under the heat lamp. No big deal. Kids still eat them right? The gentle men remakes the special order quesadillas since it was incorrect and we politely thanked him for that as we waited about 5-8 minutes for the new plate. He politely says he’ll “take care of it” and we poilitley thank him again. All smiles as we are now fully endorsed in our food. All the while our server has left again and we can’t find her to get refills. Again, knowing that it’s friday night, and busy, we wait. The gentleman comes back with our tickets followed by our server. We ask for to-go boxes for the meals unfinished. We wait a while longer on the to-cups, but eventually decided to ask for them when we pay. That’s where it gets upsetting. As I walk up to the manager at the cash register, I politely ask for a to-go cup and say “I just wanted to let you know that we waited a while longer for our food than normal”, thinking all managers would like to know that service time was not met. And that’s it. I did not complain one bit. The gentleman proceeds to come up, she talked to him as she’s leaving to go get my to-go cup, and he takes the receipt out of her hand. Words were spoken between them that were very unpleasant about my concerns. He then looks at me with hands raided like a teenage girl with attitude and says “was everything ok? I thought it was when I asked about your meal.” To which I started to reply “well my concerns...” and he cute me off, turns his head towards to cash register, flips his hand and says “oh you JUST want a discount! with attitude. And I mean attitude. I look at my kids and my friend and back st him and say “no, I just wanted to express my concern” before he rudely interrupted AGAIN to tell me the total of my bill. And that’s it. I mentally lost my compassion for this restaurant. I can honesty understand writing down an order wrong. I can. I was a server. I’m human. I know we make mistakes. BUT. I will NOT tolerate attitude when trying to express concerns about our visit and being talked down to just because I’m white and being a guest at your restaurant. There was no illwill until the gentleman, who said he was the manager too, decided to give us a less than appreciative attitude. I was NOT looking for a handout or discount. I was fully and graciously eager to pay for my meal entirely with a 25% tip at least until he decided to demean me and my family. To say I am disheartened about this is an understatement, and hope no one has to be treated...

Tonight I experienced the absolute worst, most unprofessional service I have ever had at a restaurant.

The food was good, but the service was deplorable.

The waiters started out pretty cordial, and patiently took orders for me and two friends and my three children, but never came to check on our table. When we wanted a refill on our drink, we had to flag down a waitress (who was not our original waiter) to request a refill. It would have been slightly more understandable if the restaurant had been busy, but there was literally only one to two other tables with customers on and off the entire time we were there. Later, we had to flag a waitress down yet again to order a fried ice cream for dessert. We were all splitting the dessert, and they didn’t bring enough spoons. Again we had to flag someone down to request another spoon. Which they didn’t bring. So we had to yet again flag someone down to request another spoon for our dessert.

If the inconvenience of having to flag down wait staff anytime we needed something wasn’t enough, one of the children accidently knocked his Styrofoam cup onto the floor and it split and started to leak. One of my friends tried to mitigate the damage and picked up the cup and carried it to the mop bucket so the rest of the spilling wouldn’t create a larger mess on the floor, and tried to get the waitress’s attention. When she finally looked up from sweeping, she snapped at my friend, “What is that?” My friend explained that it was a broken water cup and that there was water on the floor and asked for napkins. The girl muttered under her breath, but didn’t try to help my friend, or get her a towel or napkins. My friend got napkins from one of the table dispensers and started to clean the floor, which again, in the nearly empty restaurant, no staff volunteered to help her with.

I believed the waiter’s saucy manner, the fact that no one had offered to bring our check or refill our drinks, and the overall lack of service deserved to be addressed, so I went to ask the man sleeping at the register for a manager. I walked up and said, “sir,” but he was too asleep to hear me, so I had to rap my fingers on the glass of the counter to even get his attention. Turns out, he was the manager. Sleeping in the main dining room at the register (It was about 9:30 p.m., but the restaurant was scheduled to be open for another half an hour). I asked if he was the only manager on duty, which he was, and I started to tell him about the service we had received. Before I could even finish what I was saying, he was chiming in with, “yeah, I’ll talk to them about that.” (I definitely didn’t feel he was even listening—that is if he was even fully awake yet.)

My friend continued to clean the floor as the waitress glared me down and the rest of the staff went about their business. I was so annoyed I went to speak to the manager again, and he was rude and impatient. We paid our tab and left. But by this time I was pretty annoyed at the overall treatment we had received and wanted to complain at a higher level. I went back inside to request the name of higher management, and the manager was curt, and asked me for my name as well. I told him, “not that it should matter to you, but my name is Erin, and I would like the name of the next manager up or the owner.”

In all honesty, I do not know what we did to piss those people off, but regardless, nothing we did warranted the level of rude, unprofessional, unattentive service we received, and I will not be returning to that...

We drive by this Mexican restaurant all the time, so I know there are some loyal fans of this place. But our experience was a total disappointment.

We stopped for lunch on a Tuesday around 12 noon. The place was not busy, and we were told to pick any seat. To start, the server was not friendly. It almost felt like he was being bothered to have to wait on us. People have bad days, but come on, when you're in the service industry, you've got to put a smile on your face and at least be pleasant. Unfortunately, this set the tone for our entire experience.

Chips and salsa were delivered as soon as we sat down. I asked the server, and he told us that the chips came in a bag, but they made the salsa in-house. The chips were not great (hard and not crisp), and the salsa was watered-down without much flavor. We asked for another salsa and it was the same as the first one we got. We love chips and salsa and usually eat so much of it that we can't finish our meals. But we pushed the chips aside after barely making a dent in the basket. We both ordered water and it has an unpleasant taste to it. We've had water at other restaurants in Harker Heights (and Killeen) and it doesn't taste this bad. I can only imagine that they get it directly from the faucet over a sink in back, where I bet most other places filter their water before serving it. If they are serving filtered water here, then they need to change the filter! All this and I haven't even talked about the food!

I ordered the Mexican Burrito Plate, and my wife ordered the Tejano Plate. The burrito wasn't very impressive....meat inside of a tortilla with cheese on top. Topping it off with some shredded lettuce, pico de gallo, shredded cheese, and sour cream would have greatly enhanced the meat. Now, I probably could have ordered all those toppings extra, but the burrito is already $12.25 (which is more than the price listed on the menu on their website), and I wanted to try something right off their menu without adding extra stuff. The refried beans are okay, a little garnish would make it look more pleasing, and the rice was undercooked without much flavor. The crispy taco that came with my wife's meal was soggy and like my burrito, it was just meat inside of a taco shell with a little lettuce and shredded cheese sprinkled on top.

There are a lot of restaurants out there that serve Mexican or Tex-Mex food and unfortunately, Taquerias Mexico falls well short of average. Based on our experience, we won't go back and don't recommend this restaurant.

UPDATE: I appreciate the response from the owner. This was a visit to your Harker Heights location. Other people have left great reviews for your restaurant, and this is only my opinion based on our visit. Although we won't visit again, I do wish you all the luck in the very challenging...