El Patio — Restaurant in Houston

I would never pick this restaurant on my own. I just happened to be trapped on those Americans No Reason National Days. This time it was The National Margarita Day; a dumb made up day to make up a reason to get out and drink Margaritas. like adults really need reasons to drink. Anyhow, I was invited by one of the regulars. I checked the website, and looked clean and neat. Nothing to do with the real place itself. We got there and sit in the No minors club that has a limit stay of 2.5 hours, which is a clever way to tease people to drink . At the No Minors Club, the waiters were rushing for no reason, and even worse, either ignoring the tables or pushing them to order fast. That was terrible. My friend, who is a regular of the place, enjoys their red dipping sauce for the nachos (it is O.K.) and indulged himself with the sauce. The waiter, then, warned and attempted to charge $ 3.00 for a topped ounce of red sauce. (Any local would be insulted by that. I did.) Because I considered that to be very rude, I decided already to distrust the margarita. So I ordered the Beer of the Day ( a $ 2.5 brown ale random branded from Mexico. Totally worth it) We went down for enchiladas (too much salt, too much salsa, too little care. zero balance). I did not order other thing considering the poor quality. However, the ladies next table went for tamales plate (good looking tamales, neat served with good looking dressing. however, I am positive, those tamales were not prepared In Situ. So for those purists and for the health department, those were not actually El Patio production) This place found a formula to success by having the two different rooms in one setting. the place looks very old and not specially clean. It is ugly, but, not the most dirty either. It has the same ambiance than the today's El Cortez Casino in Las Vegas, but without the "Way Out of Luck" looking souls or the smoke. The place is full of regulars that started coming by in the glorious 80's and 90's but come back for the sake of their traditions, and are not prone to check on the new quality of the service they are receiving. It was sad, witnessing who a waiter ignored the old lady next to him, to waving the wife of the couple in the next table, making gestures to pressure her to order more drinks for her visible tipsy/drunk husband. My friend, who is very sociable, got acquainted with the couple. Both of them coming since the early 90's. and sit in the same area, most of the time. You would expect some respect and consideration for the customers. Specially those regulars that...

Once I year, I like to visit spots that I don't typically frequent. El Patio was selected for the night, and I figured why not. Sound be fun right?!

Well, I got there and was slightly dismayed that the only parking option you had was valet. I hate having people touch my baby (her name is Babz) but I went along with it any way (not that I had a choice). Gave them my keys and went inside. I put my name on the list for an inside table but told the waitress I be sitting outside since it was a 20 minute wait. For the entire time that I sat outside, no one offered me drinks. They said because my name was on the list to go inside they didn't think I'd want anything to drink while waiting. Ok.

While waiting, my baby Babz was kicking up a fuss. Apparently they decided to move her and without turning off the alarm proceeded to drive get around with her alarm blaring. I left my table and walked up to my car and knocked on the passenger window, the driver ignored me. I walked over to the driver said and asked for my keys. I turned off my alarm and showed then how to turn it off in the future. The valley guy grabbed my keys out of my hand and proceeded to turn on my car. I should've known that once Babz was not happy, that I wouldn't be happy.

I returned to my seat and opted to stay outside because it was a nice night. We ordered dinner and drinks. Because I'm keto, I ordered plain margaritas with the plan to add some of my mio flavored drops to the mix. The waitress asked for our card bc in the past, people would drink outside and leave without paying. So they'd skimp out on tabs that were over a hundred dollars. We obliged and gave her a card for the tab.

We ordered dinner, and 2 rounds of drinks. Our tab was about $80 at this point. Then the "manager" (?) stopped me as I was putting my mio into my margarita. He asked to see what it was, and I showed him. He took the bottle and read it and then told me that I couldn't do that while there. I explained to him why I was adding the drops but he said it was against their policy (right). I told him okay and they brought us our tab without us even asking - essentially kicking us out.

We paid and left.

Suffice it to say, I won't be returning here. There are too many Mexican restaurants serving quality food and drinks for me to put up with their lack of customer service. If you're reading this check out Kona Grill, Pappasitos, and Doneraki for some decent happy...

Food: Tex-Mex stylings with some level of Mexican food authenticity. Atmosphere-- is there such a thing as a too family friendly environment? My wife and I wanted an adult dinner for two; every table, other than ours, had at least two kids if not more! Also, it was slightly smoky-- just slightly. * Great place for a family, with kids, looking for a texmex experience. I had 5 street tacos-- al pastor; the charro beans were good, the rice was good and the tacos were pretty good. Chips and salsa were fine as well. My food is where I experienced some authenticity in the flavors. My wife-- she had an inauthentic plate of food. Her queso was more like melted Kraft singles. Her meat in her tacos al carbon-- not seasoned. She claims it was the worst Mexican food she ever had. She's as Caucasian as you get -- I'm very Americanized but all four of my grandparents are Mexicano and of course my parents. So for a white girl to not like it and say it was bad Mexican food... Let's just say the food is very much so catering to its crowd-- and I think I was the only Mexicano there besides the employees! This was a Friday night. It look like the owner came out and played a pretty typical common Mexican song on the guitar with another person who seem like a legit mariachi. The kids had balloon animals. And this was 7:00 p.m. on a Friday night. Value-- prices for lunch look great-- dinner seems to be around El Tiempo pricing. Parking-- was peculiar. The parking lot was full and they do have free valet. Our service was great-- the waiter actually listened and took to heart what I expected from the food-- I ordered...