El Patron Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Helena

I have dined at El Patron twice now in the past 3 months. The service is extremely fast. They are more authentic than your average TexMex/ SouthEastern Mexican restaurant.

First off, they bring you out THREE complimentary dips for your chips: a Red Salsa, a Salsa Verde (green salsa), and a black refried bean dip with cheese sauce in it. That alone gives this place tons of “brownie points”, because I prefer salsa Verde over red salsa. Secondly, they offer Piña Coladas, Jarritos (multiple flavors), and aquas frescas— I thought this was impressive as well.

My first visit here they offered me “grilled jalapeños” when I asked for jalapeños—- they were spicy and delicious! (Not pictured). I ordered the carnitas meal, and a chili relleno ( I judge a Mexican restaurant’s quality by their chili rellenos… they definitely passed my test!) not only do they offer ground beef filled, but also SHRIMP filled chile rellenos — soooo yummy. I had so much food it didn’t even look like I had eaten anything and had tons to take home with me

During my recent visit, I ordered a steak fajita salad. It. Was. So. Good! The steak was juicy and all the vegetables were good too. I asked for a side of queso and jalapeños. The total for my meal (plus extras), the complimentary dips, and nachos ended up being less than $12. Quite a steal for the amount of food I had! Great portion sizes.

I will definitely be seeing them regularly and trying other...

I give it two stars because the food is pretty decent, nothing anymore special than another place though. The service is what will be the downfall of this restaurant. Went in today and the server we had was too concerned with flirting with a table of two girls than actually taking care of any other table in the section. Bad attitude, never asked if food was good, had to flag down a different server to get my husband a refill after being bone dry for 25 minutes. Typically you can pretty much count on a Mexican restaurant providing decent service, and this was actually a first of having horrible service at any Mexican restaurant we’ve ever been to. My husband handled the check out and made note of the bad service and was offered a manager to speak to, but since he’s super nice he said not to worry about it and left. I tried to call shortly after coming home just to find out the name of the server so that if we ever returned we could request not to be in his section, and when I asked for a manager, I was told “there’s no boss, theres no manager” which I found funny since 20 minutes prior we had been offered one. Just avoid this place, nothing special about the food and severely...

We’ve eaten here several times and haven’t had a problem until recently when I picked up our food and the card machine didn’t like my card and was printing out a weird receipt. The older manager guy was the one checking me out and he ran my card multiple times. I told him to stop and gave him a different card. It printed out another weird receipt. I checked my bank account and credit card app and showed him that the transaction had gone through on both cards and that he needed to give me a refund. He refused because the transaction said ‘pending’. Then he tried to give one of my cards to someone else and didn’t want to give it back to me but finally did and wasn’t happy about me taking our food. I got tired of arguing with him and left and planned to go back a few days later after those transactions were no longer pending but then COVID came through our house. So now I just won’t be eating there again. It’s too bad because the food is good but there are other Mexican places near me that don’t...