El Patron — Restaurant in Kansas City

Well folks... Saturday night was one-for-the-books...

We made this a Friday night regular but I unfortunately drew a 'short straw' three-weeks in a row (back in Jan/Feb 2017) and received cold meals. Each time this happened, we always paid full-price for our meal but believed the next visit would be better. Three weeks into the bad meals, we finally had a face-to-face with a night manager, she made it right. She was kind, polite, professional. She offered us a free meal and gave us a gift card to return. She did comp our entire meal but I refused the gesture... I demanded the waiter charge us for 'something' (cup of coffee, coke, something...). He returned with a charge for $0.01. Accepting the manager's complimentary meal, we paid the equivalent of the meal and left him a $25 tip.

After our three-weeks of bad luck, we finally returned to normal. Great meals, served hot and accurate, EXCELLENT waiters, amazing margaritas... you name it, it was WONDERFUL.

We stopped by on Saturday (3/11/17). We arrived, there was a short wait, we enjoyed our margarita and a beer at the bar and were seated at one of our favorite tables upstairs. Cash (waiter) and Ivan (another waiter) both quickly greeted us and got the evening rolling. We ordered. Our meal was served... PERFECTLY! We were thrilled and actually both commented to each other how nice it was to be enjoying our favorite KC restaurant again! Then... Estela decided to come by our table.

Estela's son, Arturo, was the long-time business owner of El Patron. She "inherited" El Patron as the business owner in October 2016.

Estela, asks if I was the one who "complained" about having a cold meal. I simply replied that I was in-fact that person who complained after three-weeks in a row of having poor experiences. She proceeds to start berating me for complaining of my poor experiences. I explained to her that this was most-certainly water-under-the-bridge and these issues had been satisfactorily resolved and we were thrilled to have our usual 'Friday-night-spot' back and how much the service / food had improved. Despite my explanation, she proceeded to continue to raise her voice - making a scene to the entire dining room. She then accused us of trolling her restaurant just to get free meals... of which, we have never accepted. Each time, we've always paid for our meal and the one time the manager complimentary covered our meal, we paid the meal's equivalent in tip to our waiter. The verbal assault continued and she pursued complaining that we returned to her restaurant... the banter continued, telling us how she has her kitchen serving 1000 plates per day and has NEVER had a complaint except from us... I personally checked the "not recommended reviews" - I'm afraid her statement isn't quite accurate...

The only way to end it? Rudely, I finally interrupted her, requested she stop and assured her that stopping this verbal harassment was in her best interest as any positive feedback I've ever given would most-certainly be negated with her behaviors / words / actions of right then. Fair? Not sure but it was the only way to stop her unnecessary, unprofessional, ridiculous and outrageous outburst. By the time her verbal abuse was done, the dining room was silent... the table next to us who had six (6) ladies that were just 10 minutes earlier very much-so enjoying their time, immediately paid out and left.

Immediately, three of her employees flew to our table, apologizing profusely and begging us to excuse her horrid behavior and words. They all expressed their embarrassment for and of her. Seems as though this isn't the first outburst of hers as they implied.

I've had 91,148 views of my Yelp posts in the past 90 days. That's 1000 views per day. You can bet your last buck I'll do everything in my power to share how horrible of an experience this was and how this restaurant is plagued with bad ownership. El Patron - call me when Estela is gone - until then, we'll...

If I could leave ZERO stars I would. I will say the food was fairly decent however the service was terrible. When our buzzer went off the lady took it from us and shouted for us to go upstairs with a quick hand movement. That annoyed me but I proceeded upstairs with my 12 year old autistic son anyway. Upstairs we were walking around trying to find a place to sit until a young lady greeted us and showed us to an empty table. We sat there for 10 minutes or more before a waiter, fairly late 30’s to maybe mid to late 40’s approached us. He didn’t apologize for being late and asked if we wanted drinks and if we were ready to order. We gave him drink orders and I tried to tell him we wanted cheese sauce which he finally did hear me but he was so much in a hurry I didn’t think he heard me. It took a while to get chips and salsa and it took even LONGER for the cheese sauce. The waiter comes back to take our order in which we order a appetizer nacho and pick 3 meal. The food arrived, my food was correct but my AUTISTIC son was giving a child’s nacho with only meet and cheese and the way he looked at it was with huge dissatisfaction. He expected a “nacho” to have lettuce, pico and other fixings so he hesitated to eat. I told him to let me ask server for lettuce and pico in which we were charged for those items. It took more than 10-15 minutes for that to come out which our food was already cold by then. I just told my son to eat his food instead of waiting because our food was getting cold. So, after the 10-15 minutes the lettuce and pico came out and we did use it on our already cold food. Our drinks didn’t get refilled until our beverages were primarily empty which at that point we didn’t even need a refill because we were ready to go due to the lack of service. The waiter brings my check, I paid for it and left. I’m leaving this review because my som who doesn’t understand very much was left disappointed and he witnessed others get exemplary service while we waited to get further disappointed. I’ve frequented this establishment over the years several times and I have noticed the difference in service between certain patrons. Usually, I never leave reviews but my child’s feelings were hurt and felt like he was just forced to eat something that he didn’t order in which the waiter brought him what he thought he should have. I didn’t want to send the food back or argue because that is not the example I set for my children. I will NEVER go back to this establishment and I am very well known and word of mouth is everything. I will tell all of my colleagues, friends/family members to never frequent this establishment again. The level of service for “black” patrons versus “white” patrons is not the same and unfortunately my son had to be a witness to this unsatisfactory service...

Holy crap folks. So I'll start off with a backstory. We have been coming here every Friday night since the end of last year. I'll admit that the first few times we came, my partner's chimichanga was cold. we spoke to a manager back at the end of January and after that everything has been great. We bring everyone that visits us from out of town here... it is definitely our most visited restaurant in KC. Everything has been great for a month and a half. We missed our regular Friday night last night so we made up for it coming in tonight. We had a waiter we've had before - Ivan - great guy and always does a great job. After a few drinks at the bar we were sat and ordered. Immediately after our food showed up and older woman that I've seen there before comes to our table... she starts harassing us about our first experiences, raising her voice to us about how she couldn't believe that we'd say her food was ever cold and why we would come back. I explained that we loved the food but those first FEW times it was cold but we've never had problems since and we come there once a week because we generally like it. She kept pushing and making a scene, cutting me off and accusing us of wanting free food. I explained to her that we had received ONE free meal one time and that same time we tipped our waiter $25 for good service, the food was just cold. She didn't care and continued to harass us. After she left three employees came up and apologized, said they were embarrassed and that she was the owner. We asked for a box for our untouched meal, paid our ticket with tip, and left. This place is obviously plagued with bad ownership: one manager rapes girls, another pushes frequent customers out of the restaurant. The owner kept repeating that they served over 1,000 plates a day and have NEVER had a complaint except for ours those few times... unlikely. But what is likely is that someone will read this review since I've had 20k+ views of my reviews in the past month and my partner has had 30k+. If you are in management of El Patron, you can contact me when she sells the place and we will return. Until then we will be going across the street every Friday night instead. Also, we know at least two regular larger parties that go to El Patron on a regular basis... we have already spoken to them and they will not be returning to El Patron again... continuing to reach out to...