El Tiempo Cantina — Restaurant in Houston

There's better Tex-Mex at any taco stand or gas station with fewer rude/unfriendly people

I've gone about a dozen or so time in the last year (maybe more) before I decided to flat out refuse to go again. The food is hit or miss, if good cooks are there, then the food is great. Unfortunately, it seems like they can't keep good cooks at this location because the food is terrible on the next visit, and, when I asked if the same cooks were there as before, I was told they weren't.

First, the short issues. The prices are way too high for what you get. Two cheese enchiladas, rice, and beans for $21++? Being in the industry, I can tell you that this plate should be about $14++ at most. Overall, I'd say everything on this menu should cost no more than 2/3rds of what it does. I'm not sure what the money's going to, but it's not paying for good cooks or servers.

I'm glad they changed the menu, the old one was difficult to read and had so many fonts and colors that I my head hurt (I'm dyslexic and a touch ADHD) so I'd just close it and order things that I knew they served. Unfortunately, some of the changes to the food were mistakes, like adding Texas Red Chili to enchiladas (more later).

The service has ranked among the worst in my experience (and I am a Chef and have run many restaurants) on almost all of my visits. One server was amazing on two visits, and the hostess from last night was very friendly as well. An incident with service a few weeks ago stands out: My partner and I came in at 8:15ish to grab an app and a couple drinks and sat at the bar. Well, Julio (the bartender) had already closed everything, despite still being fully open with customers till 9. We went so far as to ask if he minded that we sat there (we'd already called earlier to make sure they'd still be serving and that we wouldn't be an issue), and he said it was fine. My partner ordered a margarita and we got some queso con chilies. Julio said nothing to me and gave us two margaritas - not what I ordered or wanted. I said that I never ordered it and told him I wanted something else. He takes the second one and sets it to the side to pour out later then proceeds to walk around and ignore me for 15 to 20 minutes. It's only after the manager comes over to drop off the queso and asks if we need anything else that I, intentionally very loudly, mention that I still haven't been able to order a drink because Julio was ignoring me. At this he finally takes my order. Having been here before, I can't say that the drink was as good as before, and he went back to ignoring us and acting like we were a problem for him. This pretty much continued until we left.

Last night we went by for drinks, queso, and got dinner Togo. Well, the drinks were great. The hostess was amazing. The queso tasted great. Problem comes in with the Togo order - no tortillas for fajitas or carnitas. Then we tried the enchiladas - the cheese on one was burnt (not the light char that should be there), there was almost no sauce on it (I only know there was sauce because of the chunks of Textured Vegetable Protein from their Texas Red Chili), and the tortillas on all of the enchiladas were undercooked. The Texas Red Chili tasted awful on the enchiladas and left we wanting to know what was wrong with enchilada sauce? The carnitas came out as old school when they should have been new school, though the hostess got this fixed for us.

Overall, during the last year, my partner and I have had ONE experience where there weren't multiple major issues. This place needs serious work or to just close it's doors.

And an answer to what I recommend at this restaurant: An...

Food: so disappointed. The queso was good and the chips (although they were 90% broken) were crispy and thin, Green & red salsas were ok but nothing to praise. Refried beans were watery and bland (salt didn't help but the addition of the queso helped marginally). Suisa de la Ninfa with carnita filling was disappointing also, although some of the red salsa & salt helped. I'm not gonna even go there about the rice concoction. It was so bad that I couldn't even guess what the ingredients were. Coffee was okay but insipid Margarita was strangely bitter, but not in a good way. Sopapilla was too thick and again flavorless. The honey was okay but processed & thinned with water straight out of the bottle. I can't even describe the chocolate... ganache? It had an unusual taste to it.

Service was good. My waiter kind of seemed to be rushed but I don't understand why. Maybe he was the only waitstaff there and he felt pressured. He was kind enough though.

Atmosphere.... DARK, really? I had to use my flashlight just to read the multi-page menu. I couldn't tell you what the decor was like, it was that dark. I will qualify the darkness, if the sun had been shining outside, then maybe the dim lighting could have been balanced but raining hard outside didn't aid the lighting at all.

$48 + tip for a non-impressive lunch? It was worth maybe.. yes, maybe $30 for 3 course meal & a cocktail.

Normally, I'll give a restaurant a second or even third chance but I don't know about this one. I can't even imagine where this place got almost 5 full stars with over a...

Starting off this was my first time eating here. The people were polite and courteous, they were able to sit me right away. The first I got to try of course was the chips and salsa. The chips needed just a little bit of salt. They brought out two different styles of salsa, which was a nice surprise, most restaurants only bring out one type both were good. The red salsa was a little bit spicy, but too spicy, it was just the right amount so you can enjoy your food with it. The green salsa was not spicy, but it tasted great. Once i got my meal, which was fajitas, the presentation looked great. The beef fajitas tasted amazing. They nice enough to give extra pico de gallo, because I don't normally eat rice. The only i was a little disappointed in is that they only gave me three corn tortillas. I understand that someone asks for flour tortillas they only give three of them, but for corn it should be more, they are alot smaller than flour tortillas and you can't too much meat on them. The last of meal was dessert, and it was great really enjoyed it. I decided to go with the flan. The presentation was nice, and the flavor was great. I really enjoyed the whole meal while I was there. Will definitely be going back to enjoy their...