Anejo Cocina Riverside — Restaurant in Jacksonville

Visited this place on last night. They receive one star because the host was very nice but this waiter EnderS as it says on the receipt wasn’t very friendly at all. His service was only good to bring our food out and received a $10 tip just for that! This was my girlfriend and I first time visiting this place and our last. When we asked for guacamole for appetizer he asked fresh or already made. We chose Fresh. After sometime he came out with guacamole in a bowl and we are looking like how do we know if it’s fresh or premade. We asked him about it and he wasn’t too friendly. He got agitated at the question and said you want me to just take it away. His English was horrible. Drinks were on point. My food was not what expected for a Mexican restaurant and it’s served with French fries 🤨. I asked him about why the French fries and again an agitation was felt as he said I don’t know I can take it away! He asked if I was smoking because I was asking questions. I even tried to respectfully talk to him in my Spanglish because I’m not fluent and still received rude responses! When it came to check time he sat the check down literally gave me all of one second to give him a card to pay. My girlfriend and I both were in cahoots as to who was paying and he got pissed and put the check back down with both cards. He walked away. Came back another second later for check and card. After he ran my card, he hovered over me to sign and give him back the signed receipt. I’m still at all with who serves fries with Mexican food. I’ve been to many Mexican locations and never fries. I was so disappointed with service that I barely touched my food, ate some fries, drank my drink and went sat outside after paying the check. Picture is the food day after uneaten with one small bite..I wouldn’t never recommend this place not even to a dog to eat crumbs in the street! Edited today 3/9/25 to add that my time at this place was so bad I forgot my card and had to return for it today! I decided to eat my leftovers for lunch today. Reheated it in the air fryer. Took three bites and it all went to the trash. Most nastiest California Burrito I’ve ever had! Why was two halves wrapped with green tortilla and the other with a regular one? I can go on and on about how nasty this place was but I’m sure I’ve expressed myself enough on how dissatisfied I am...

I chose Anejo Riverside for my birthday dinner this year because I had heard good things about their food. Thankfully their chips and salsa were decent. If that weren’t the case the entire evening would be been a real bust. We made a reservation at 6:00, and we didn’t receive our food until 7:30. When food finally did come, it came for most of our table, except 2 people (including myself) were without our meals for an additional 20 minutes. The food didn’t come until we went and told the hostess (who didn’t know what to do so I asked her to just please find our server). Several times throughout the night we had to go hunt down our server to ask her to bring the things we had already requested and were waiting on. Then to top it all off, when I finally got my order it wasn’t correct. I didn’t even tell our server about the error because who knows how long I would have been waiting on a replacement. There were 11 in our group, and 5 of those were children (age 5 and under). Thankfully and miraculously the kids all hung in there for the entire almost 3 hours we were in the restaurant. By the end we had to just get up with our checks and credit cards to take our payment directly to someone standing at the computer because we lost our server again. We were very careful to be kind and courteous and patient with our server because she seemed flustered, and I try to assume the best. We operated under the assumption that she just had too many tables to handle. She was always very kind to us, but this kind of service is just unacceptable. I chose Anejo Riverside for my birthday dinner because I love Mexican food and had heard good things about their food, but my friends and I were all very disappointed in our experience and we all agreed we won’t be back. This was not just a problem at our table. We overheard the table next to us contemplating giving up on their order and just leaving. Another table close to us was making a note of everything wrong with their order as the server was passing out their (long overdue) food. I have contact the restaurant about our experience several times and have been told by multiple employees that a manager would reach out to rectify our poor experience. It has been about 3 weeks since our visit, and I still have yet to hear from a manager or have any of this...

The wife, the nephew, and I visited Anejo Riverside. Here is the breakdown:

Ordered: Main Street Corn , Beef Empanadas, Beef Taco Tex Mex (not pictured), Anejo Chicken Fajitas, Taco de Barria, and complimentary chips with salsa. Oh and a margarita.

Good: The food was well prepared. I loved the fact that try to stick close to their Mexican/Tex Mex aesthetic in presentation and flavor. There was no denying their was alcohol in the margarita. On first sip the alcohol jumped from out the line and said welcome to AA. The chips and salsa was as close to Mexico as I came in the states. The barria’s shredded beef and overall flavor was bussin. It was not greasy or oily like I have seen from others. The consume that accompanied was flavorful and vibrant. Now let’s talk about these empanadas and street corn. Listen the presentation and flavor was on point. The street corn had smoky notes from being grilled while naturally being sweet yet salty from the cheese. The empanadas flavor of the beef accompanied with salsa and crema or sauce was a great way to start out meal. Now them fajitas was enough to feed an army. It was seasoned just right to not over power the veggies natural sweet flavor and seasoning of the chicken. I had enough left overs to make nachos with my chips. The server is was great and attentive.

Need improvement: Truthfully I don’t have much to say in the realm. I would say the cinnamon back note on the Barria maybe off putting for some. The menu though it has something for everyone could be overwhelming for a first time visitor. I also feel they were holding back a little bit with the flavors to make it palatable for most. The service while great I often times found it hard to communicate as it appeared the servers first language was not English. This could be helped by lowering the volume of the music in the establishment. It’s a small space so the music is amplified and also makes communicating hard.

Overall: it was a great experience and look forward to visiting again. And when I do I will only be addressed as Jefe’ and drink only don julio or cerveza embracing my Latino...