Memo's Mexican Food — Restaurant in Lakewood

Tonight was our first visit. At first i was very excited. The menu looks amazing, prices are great, and we fully expected a great experience. What we experienced, however, was something quite different. The gal working the drive thru, was nothing short of rude. She acted like we had knocked on the front door of family home at dinner time and asked for 4 plates of food. She was too busyasking me if i was done to listen to my order. We shrugged it off to maybe it had been a rough night, pulled up to the window and waited. When she came to the wondow to take our order, she didnt greet us, just walked up and stuck her hand out the window, as if we should just know how much we were to give her for the food. When i asked for a total, she rolled her eyes, went to the register, punched some buttons, and came back. Stuck her hand back out the window, and snidely said $35.27. That didn't seem too bad for 4 meals. I paid it and didnt even second guess it. Until we got the bag and pulled away. We only had 3 meals. Mind you, we ordered 2 Carne Asada Enchilada Plates with rice and beans ($6.99 each), 1 Carne Asada fries sub Chicken ($8.29, no price listed to sub chicken in place of the carne asada, but i would think this would be free given chicken is much cheaper), 2 Shrimp Soft Tacos ($3.24 each), 1 side of Rice and Beans (couldnt find a price. But I didnt figure it could be too terribly much as it isn't anywhere else)(prices are what was listed on their menu at the drive thru). For $35.27, we got everything except 1 of the enchilada plates. So back throught the drive thru we go. By this time, my daughter has decided to get thebCarne Asada Fries ($8.29) with extra cheese and sour cream (unknown price) and her friend who orderes thw fries with chicken needs more sour cream, which i also order. The total for this order, $13. 67. How??? I don't understand how we have gone up $5 by adding extra cheese and sour cream, and 1 side of sour cream. When i questioned it, the lovely gal at the window says, well do you want the extra cheese and sour cream or not?? I say yes, she rudely repeats the total, with her hand extended throigh the window. We get her food, and drive to the next parking lot to eat. I look at the receipt to see why it was all so much more than what the mwmu said. Not only are rhere no dollar amounts on the receipt anywhere, but there is double meat added to every single item on bothe receipts. Something we ABSOLUTELY DID NOT ask for. I try to let it go and just eat. My daughters friend is eating her chicken fries, and its good for the first few bites. Then i see her face changing. She says the first part of her chicken was good, first 4 -5 bites. But thwm it tasted like mold. Every piecw she had after that 4th or 5th bite tased moldy. She tried a few times to eat it, but ended up seperating thr chicken from the fries and only having fries for dinner. The enchiladas were good, other than being kind of just messily slapped in there with sauce spatrer everywhere and a rather excessive amount of enchada sauce for just 2 of them. My daughters fries were good. But my shrimp tacos were, interesting might be the word. They use small shrimp, one step above the baby ones you buy canned. And they put a TON of them in each taco. They also put grilled green pepper, grilled onion, rice, and cheese in them, which I'm not used to, but i was wxcited to try it. The first taco had what appeared to be half a large green pepper and half a large onion in it, a good spoonful of rice, and about 6 little shreds of cheese melted on top. The second taco had one tiny sliver of grilled onion, 3 very small slices if green pepper, 3 to 4 spoonfuls of rice, and about 8 to 10 little cheese shreds melted on it. The shrimp tasted (and looked) like it had been boiled in cumin, but not for long enough to fully cook them, the rice didnt ttaste like anything, and thw beans were runny and gross. Literally THE WORST Mexican food...

I would usually give a full 5 stars because we love memo's (specifically this location, the other one is not as good imo even if it is closer to us...we would rather drive further for better tasting food 😅) but unfortunately the food quality and quantity has been going downhill lately. Last night's order was probably the last one for awhile because it was that bad. Not sure if there were new cooks or what but I ordered a chicken and cheese quesadilla, it was mostly tortilla and barely any filling which is crazy because it's NEVER looked like that, we've bought them plenty of times before and they're usually stuffed...this looked like it barely had a scoop of chicken on it and barely any cheese, it was just random clumps of meat and cheese inside of a tortilla instead of evenly mixed and spread out. My chile relleno was totally undercooked, it was pale in color when it's usually golden brown but also it was burnt in some areas like it was seared instead, it also had that raw chunch to it, it was full of seeds (they usually remove majority of the seeds before stuffing it and everything in the tray was bland. We also ordered 4 carne asada burritos and they were pretty much half the size from what they usually are, etc. The sizes and flavors not being uniform is really upsetting because we have been ordering the same food from there for years at the VERY least once a month (sometimes once a week) but now it's just not like it used to be, besides it not being prepared the same, nothing is tasting the same either. The issue could be that we usually come later at night and they may have different cooks and every time we have come earlier, the quality of the food is just not as good. Not sure what's going on but I miss the way it was before 🥴

Maybe we'll try again another time and hopefully things are back on track so I can update to 5 stars. Definitely love the atmosphere and the customer service is ALWAYS great. I just think the cooks might need to all be on the same page so everything is being prepared the same way across the board.

Update 6/27/2024: The night cooks are AMAZING!! Went a couple times during the day and ordered other stuff besides my usual just to see and it was ok but we went back after 10pm last night to get my usual and it was DELICIOUS!! 🤤 My husband also agreed that his food tasted like it was actually loved this time 😅 5⭐ for the night cooks for sure! Now let's see if the day cooks can get up there...

Not the best location. I was a Memo's skeptic for a while until the Auburn location changed my mind, regarding the ability to order decent Mexican food from a drive thru. That being said, not all chain restaurant locations are created equal, and the Lakewood location is a pretty clear case of that. The drive thru and location itself is not super easy to get into from 3 out of the 4 directions you can be driving past the corner it's on. I don't blame them for poor location choices, but there didn't seem to be a very big effort made into trying to make the poorly designed space work for them, either. We were the only car in the drive thru for the entire 25 minute duration we spent waiting on a weekday evening. We didn't custom order anything at all, and didn't choose items that would normally require additional prep or cook time. And yet, we waited nearly 30 minutes in the drive thru. All of that would be fine, if the food were of the quality we'd since come to expect from them. Sadly, we were disappointed here as well. The guacamole was obviously store bought, and globbed onto our entrees like gelatinous goop you could tile a roof with. The cheese was already hardening as if it had been sitting without a heat lamp for an hour, the taquitos were cold in the middle and stale yet chewy, and the refried beans in my tostada were obviously microwaved in an attempt to make them warm again after sitting in the fridge. Memo's has never been known for their desserts stealing the show, so it's pretty sad that the tastiest things in our super overpriced (obviously reheated) meal were the soggy cinnamon churros with slimy insides. If you pretended hard enough, you could imagine it was a custard filling or something, to keep from involuntarily gagging. Probably unrelated, but we all had some pretty severe headaches a few hours later, which made the thought of even finishing our leftovers nauseating. 4/10, would actively picket this location to protect people from unwittingly subjecting themselves to this, if I lived closer.

P.S. It still gets 2 stars because it's Mexican food (which is the best food), and at least cured my sweet tooth...