El Mexicali Cafe — Restaurant in Indio

Warning folks!

Save yourself the bother of making advance reservations as it made no difference this evening..... So here’s the situation...... We went to this place two weeks ago without a reservation and patiently waited our turn (1.5 hours) as others arrived with reservations and had priority. We certainly get that and waited our turn without fuss

Fast track ahead to this evening. Four days prior I called for a reservation for two (wife and I). A special occasion as it was my wife’s birthday and we wanted to celebrate. I told them this was special and it was my wife’s birthday. All good (so I thought) as my reservation for two was made for 7:00 pm.

This evening, we arrived to the restaurant at 6:50. Just before our reservation. I told one of the servers we had reservations for 7:00. Gave our names and waited. We saw some groups get seated with reservations also at our time.

All is good so we thought as we’d be next. Not so, as a fellow in a group of 4 comes forward to the server and rudely asks why others are being seated before them as they’d arrived 15 mins earlier without reservations and saw other groups arriving being seated.

The server politely told this fellow it’s because these people had reservations. Meanwhile my wife and I are watching this thinking well we are next as a group we’re just leaving a table and it looked like we are next.....

Well folks, absolutely wrong as the server gives this fellow and his group the table before us!

My wife and I are very patient and understanding people.... but have to say we lost it at that point. We had already been waiting 40 minutes past our 7:00 reservation time. We threatened to leave when a table did finally open up. In hindsight we should have simply left as this fiasco was so uncaring and totally rude. But we hanged on for an appie, a Margherita and certainly no tip. After all, we needed to salvage something on what was supposed to be a special night for us.

The summary of this whole thing.....

Good food. A bit overpriced but tasty.

If you are not local don’t waste your time with reservations as it means nothing. Locals or frequent customers get priority.

Be prepared to wait. Their manner in how they manage the front end. That is customers coming through the front door waiting for a table is a complete joke. They have no idea what they are doing so be patient and expect a certain degree of frustration. And remember..... As nice as reservations are it means nothing to them as money or rude pushy people seems more important than proper (and fair) service procedures.

In closing, we certainly hope nobody else experiences the truly disheartening situation we did tonight regardless of how good the food might be. They are in need of better (front end) management and it shows. But as long as raking in the $$$ is more important than you as a customer then I’m afraid nothing will change so be...

Food was good but not great. Service was again ok but not fully attentive. (Needed to ask for refills on chips & drink after empty for pretty long time)

I will say that the sangria was very tasty and one of the better mixes I’ve had over the years.

Fajitas was not great. Beef & chicken appear to have been cooked in a skillet and were over cooked. Not grilled like traditional Fajitas in Texas. The vegetables were plentiful and the sauce was tasty but, for the price it was very little meat and this was disguised by the significant amount of bell peppers.

The set up was unremarkable. Rice & Beans.

Caldo De Reyes was A good contender and the ingredients were appropriate but, the soup base is fairly flavorless. Truly good Caldo de Reyes has a flavorful soup base. This was not that.

So it’s not to be Hypocritical, I will say through we ate almost everything. We were hungry and it was good. Just not great. Certainly not enough to bring us back in the future. There are other places that do a better job for the money.

The final two items that bother me the most were: • 3 1/2% convenience fee to use my American Express card. • the gratuity calculation on the bill was not based on the pre-tax amount. In fact, it was based on the post tax plus the additional credit card surcharge multiplied times the percentage rate. I have never seen that before and I have dislike to seeing that. I would have preferred they did not try to do a gratuity calculation on the bottom of my receipt. If you’re going to incorrectly it right don’t do it.

We left the inflated gratuity amount but it was grudgingly.

• Those final two items were enough to ensure that I will...

My family and I were eager to come eat here but none of our expectations were met. We had a horrible customer service. Upon arrival we were told that it’d be about a 20 minute wait since there was another family in front of us. We were ok with that and waited. About 30 minutes later a waitress came out and asked who was next. We automatically gave the family in front of us their place as next in line when two white American men stood in front of us totally ignoring that we were there telling the waitress that they were there before us and that we should get attended after them. None of this being true at all, we were there first. Like 10 minutes later the waitress that had first attended us (nothing against her she was polite and gave us our spot) came out to lead us to our table when the other waitress comes out and tells us that the two men are first. While we were trying to sort things out the two men race towards the table and sit down claiming that they should be attended first. The second waitress did nothing about it and just told us to wait for the next available table. In that moment we felt the discrimination and the intensity of the situation when everybody was looking at us. We left the place. They don’t even deserve to name their restaurant Mexicali because in Mexicali we have never been treated this way. Overall such an embarrassing and horrible experience and it’s sad that my younger brothers had to experience this first hand. Doesn’t even deserve a one...