Taco Cabana — Restaurant in Houston

From 2017. Reasonable TexMex fast food. Held to 3 due to lack of speed. Shouldn't take 22 minutes for tacos.

7Dec2020; Will have to rate them an F this trip.  And will be my last trip here. My wife hasn’t been happy with this Taco Cabana for years and refuses to eat there.  It is cheapo TexMex.  So yeah, don’t really expect that finest quality here.  And they won’t disappoint either!  Quality is a distant memory from what they were decades past.

So sure a pandemic is raging.  However the vast majority of restaurants operate at partial capacity.  This one was on the way between home and a place we needed to shop so decided to get a quick taco.  That shouldn’t be hard to achieve.  Upon arrival at 6:30PM on a Monday evening the place looked fairly deserted.  Only 3 cars near the entrance and none in the drive through.  Saw several in the back by the dumpster which is usually employees.   Front door is open.  Tall shields in place at the counter.  Tables in front of the counter as many places do to try to achieve physical distancing.  Every other table in the dining room had plastic wrap – pretty standard for most restaurant.

Placed order for two Taco combo dinners; that is 2 crispy beef tacos, chips, cheese dip and a drink.  Went and sat with my wife and waited for them to call out the order.  Saw two employees lounging around by the now defunct salsa bar and shut down soft drink machine.   As I pick up the order the person behind counter tells me there is no eating in the dining room.  I ask her if they are really open for business or not.  She says we can eat outside.   It’s 55F out there and the warm dining room is empty.  As in NO other customers.  That should have been a clue I suppose.  So get our food and move from sitting at a table inside to the outside.  The tacos the ground beef has been mixed with fish of some sort.  Or else the meat was really, really rank.  Either way we both opted to just eat the chips and dip as we were hungry and needed to be somewhere by 8PM.

So my advice to corporate management:  JUST SHUT IT DOWN!     You’re not doing anyone any favors by pretending to be open when you clearly are NOT ready for business.  The rest of the world has figured out how to have dine in service and you obviously missed the Covid101 class.  Your employees, those working – not the two goofing off, are clearly unprepared for people.   At a minimum if you are not going to have dining room service then put a big sign on the door and tell people it is drive through only.

This is probably one of the worst prepared restaurants I’ve seen in the past six months.

8Dec2020, spent last night on toilet. Eat at...

I made an order on the web and when it arrive it was completely wrong, I called and asked to talk to the manager and he told me he accidentally gave the pick up driver the wrong order because we had similar names and kept using that as an excuse and he wasn’t taking accountability for the mistake he made regardless like Uber they show you the name they have and you give them the order according and it’s confusing how he did that and I cussed this young man out in frustration and hung up. I did call back 10 min later to end up speaking with a young lady named star who was very apologetic and she was taking accountability for his mistake and offered me something along with my food for the misunderstanding and what I don’t understand is this young lady isn’t even the manager but handle it the correct way not even making an excuse for the mistake that was made she apologized on behalf of the young man and the for the store itself in her words “this is now how we here at taco Cabana run our establishment and I apologize for your trouble and inconvenience “ I then told her if she could make everything fresh as I was on my way and she said yes sir with no hesitation when I arrived she had made it on time and apologized to me and the window again she was a very sweet young lady and this young lady should have been a manager with the way she handled things with care and consideration but as I was talking to her I assume this was the manager who came to the window and shoved 2 recipes in my face of the other order that had a matching name to mine trying to make excuses in front of me and I can tell how embarrassed the young women felt she again apologized and I sympathize with this young girl having to work for someone who didn’t know how customer service went how unfortunate but this young lady definitely was outstanding but I don’t believe I will be ordering from here again after dealing with such an unfit manager and he didn’t even apologize at that how unprofessional I was also on duty working as I am a police officer so having to drive all the way to this location when I paid for it to be delivered was...

Went thru the drive thru ordered the Chorizo Bowl informed queso on the side to the lady taking order and repeated when I got to the window two separate times after the guy asked me again. Order was given to me I pulled up to check my order and there was queso on it. I went inside spoke to manager Carmen and she apologize and said I will have it corrected. My order was given back to me I glanced at the bowl and it looked correct. When I got to my office to eat realized there was no chorizo at all in it only a HUGE heaping of beans in the bottom, a few potatoes and a huge glob of what they call scramble eggs. I dugged all thru the beans and there was no chorizo to be found. Very disappointing, made an attempt to eat since that was my only breakfast but after 2 spoons I trashed it. There was so much beans in it all I tasted was beans nothing else. This was always my 2nd TC choice to go to when heading to work but I stopped going a few months back due to slow service, long lines, food quality going down and orders being incorrect. Decided to give it a try again and I should have just went elsewhere. I've noticed a lot of the locations has gone down over the years and I'm starting to wonder if that's the reason why some has closed. You can change your menu up to compete with other food places but if the service and food not good it defeats the purpose. Really need to redevelop your breakfast items that contains beans and eggs and stop putting so much of it in there just to fill the item and then you have to search to find any meat. Would have gave 1 star but Carmen the manager was so nice and handled the situation professionally that's the only reason I gave it 2 stars. TC you must improve your food quality, speed and cleanliness...