El Refu Tex - Mex — Restaurant in Houston

I absolutely hate writing reviews like this. Let's start with the key word here. "Contradiction".

The restaurant is a complete "contradiction" to a typical good restaurant experience. Let me explain. The food here is absolutely superb. I had the very best quail from any Mexican I've ever had in my life. That meal was an easy 5 star experiences. But I cannot give this restaurant 5 stars.

The enchiladas where delicious. As well as the fajitas tacos. Not the best but clearly better than most tex mex spots. It's worth 4 stars but I cannot give this place even 4 stars.

The tamales are not tradition but are covered with chili sauce which even taste good, so a good 3 stars for those. I can't give this restaurant even 3 stars.

The drinks are nicely made. Excellent for hanging out with friends and their extremely beautiful patio. But even for that I cannot give them the stars they deserve for that.

The "contradiction" here is all about service and the restaurant experience. It was 3 of us in my party. We got 3 different menus that seemed to match a certain demographic. My wife who's Spanish recieved a menu with more Mexican named drinks and original type meals and my friend who is black American recieved one that seemed to advertise mostly tex mex and drinks infused with Hennessy. Mine with a little of both which advertised a different gratuity amount at 18% with a party of 5 or more and a service change for using credit cards at like $7.95.

Let me be clear ... I tip standard at about 25% but I do not like to get jacked on my ticket beforehand. We were a party of 3 and they told me they charged us 18% simply because my party ordered a lot of drinks. What the heck!? We all had like 3 drinks each. Why does how many drink I order have to come with an auto gratuity penalty? And not only that, you're going to charge me for patronizing your restaurant using a debit or credit card?!

No matter how good your food is, bad service here isn't worth the visit. Inconsistency in menu charges and items depending on the customer. One menu says 15% and another says 18% and regardless of how many is in your party management decides what table is charged more vs another. Different charges on the same item from one menu vs another.

This place is a business nightmare. It's perfectly setup to get a serious lawsuit filed against it soon when the right person walks in and gets offended.

Again I don't like writing reviews like this one. We didn't cause a scene we just accepted the ticket and paid it. Pointed some things out quietly and burped and left for the evening. But to repeat a visit there is an absolute "no" without some major major, oh wait.... Major changes.

Ban Contradictions...

Definitely not coming back. I should have known it wouldn’t be a good experience from the moment I called to make a reservation. I called and asked to make a reservation on Thursday at 5:20PM for four people. The hostess told me it would require a $10 cash deposit, which I found to be strange. To be frank, I thought the hostess was trying to pocket the money. I reached out to confirm via DM, and they did. I used to work in casual dining as well as fine dining, and I’ve NEVER heard of paying a $10 cash deposit. My coworkers and I agreed to just come right after work. When we go in, I tell the hostess we will be four people (the fourth person was running a bit behind), so she walks us to our table and gives us only three menus. I have to go back to the hostess stand to ask for a fourth menu and the hostess hardly even acknowledges me when she rudely hands me the menu that SHE didn’t initially provide. When the server asks what we want to start off with, we all ask for waters and i specifically ask for mine with no ice. When I get my water, I kindly ask the food runner to remake it with no ice, but it was still something I made a mental note of. I also ask for a house margarita for myself and a pina colada for my coworker. Both drinks took a bit more than ten minutes to come, which I didn’t understand because it wasn’t busy (side note - you’d think the reservation fee was because of how busy they would be but as you can see it’s pretty empty). When my drink came, only one of the garnishes were on the rim. And it’s not like my garnishes were thin and flimsy. It just somehow felt rushed despite it taking a long time to come out. When we ordered our food, the waitress snatched all our menus and didn’t bother to check on us until it was time to pay. We never got water refills or more napkins or any basic service. Again, I’ve worked in restaurants before. I don’t understand how these basic mishaps kept happening especially considering how slow it was. Btw the servers name is Vanessa which I only know because it was on the receipt and not because she told us. Also, the receipt never showed the charges for specific items. It was just the grand total. Which I also consider to be strange as I’ve never seen that in any other restaurant I’ve been to. Also, the hosts were on their phone a lot even with people at the stand. And there were many bussers/food runners and servers standing around but none checked in on us. I was so excited to take my coworkers here because I drove by this spot a few times while waiting for it to open. But it’s such a letdown and I’m disappointed that this was the first out-of-work experience I had with my coworkers....

☆☆☆Highly recommend but CHECK YOUR FOOD, make sure it's right!!☆☆☆ First time here. The food was great. The meat was flavorful, the food came out fast. I ordered the refu sampler platter and Ground beef flautas. The food was great, don't get me wrong. But I ordered the Jumbo tacos to go and I'm extremely disappointed in it. They gave me 3 tacos and a container of rice. The container was halfway full and they didnt give me the charro beans, no sauteed onions and no salsa, literally just the tacos with a slice of avocado and half full container of rice, for $16.99 I would not order that again. My own fault for not checking the order? Probably but I wouldn't have imagined that they would leave out all the toppings. They really don't let you change things around on their dishes, I don't eat shrimp and I couldn't substitute the shrimp product on the platter. They made an exception to leave the shrimp out for me though. Now my waitress bless her heart it was her first day there. Could that be why my order was messed up? Possibly but I put the blame more on whomever prepared it. She should have checked it, but could also be the first day nerves. Will I go back, definitely. But I will also definitely check my order to the T. My friend is planning to do her birthday here now in a couple weeks. And I hope I can change my overall rating to 5 stars. The first 2 pics is what I ordered. The 3rd Pic the 17 dollar tacos 🙄 the 4th Pic what they're suppose to look like and and have on the plate, and the 5th is my receipt showing what I ordered. I had the blue curçao margarita, it was really. I wanted to order the margarita flight, but you can't mix and match the flavors you want, which I highly recommend you should be able to. And I didn't really like the guacamole 🤷🏽‍♀️ I consider this a work in...