La Colonia Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Livingston

I don't think I've ever had this poor of an experience at any Texas food establishment. Based on the reviews, I was expecting amazing food and service. Sadly, this was far from what happened. We arrived to a fairly empty restaurant, around 12 noon. The server was a young highschool student who was not friendly and seemed to be covering not just the dining area but also the assisting the kitchen staff, which was one older lady. We ordered 4 items:

Fajita plate, taco salad with fajita, a side of frijoles, and a kid's chicken enchilada plate.

As we waited for close to 30 minutes, more people arrived and an older man started to assist the young server. About 5 new families showed up and were waiting for drinks, their orders to be taken and receiving their order. 3 families were told they ran out of fajita and chicken and caldo de rez. What was left was barbacoa, ground beef, menudo and burger patties. A bit mind-blowing considering this was Sunday in the middle of the day. Families were told to re-order and not in a kind way.

Our food arrived and was very disappointing. The fajita looked like it was boiled, super tough cut of meat, lacked flavor, and was overcooked. The chicken enchilada was dried up, zero enchilada sauce and the chicken was bland. The taco fajita salad was very small for the price charged and tasted bland and stale. Taco Bell would be leaps and bounds better. I had ordered a side of frijoles because they ran out of charro beans and that order never arrived.

Growing up in a border state and enjoying so many authentic street tacos from taco trucks in TX gas stations and also growing up with authentic Baja-Mexican and Mexican food, this restaurant does not deserve ratings it currently has. I'm not sure if today was just an off day, where the cook was sick and they were short staffed, but I will not recommend this place nor will I come back.

In terms of cleanliness, the restroom was dirty and didn't have clean toilet paper rolls. Save your time, money and palette and go...

How this place has any good reviews is a mystery. The only thing that was any good was the small basket of tortilla chips, and if you want a refill of those you have to pay for it. The salsa to dip the chips in required copious amounts of salt sprinkled in it.

The wait for our food was long, and sadly not worth it. My fajita plate was made with beef that has no business being called fajita. It was the cheapest beef available, cut into strips and seasoned generically. To make matters worse, it was overcooked. I could have written this review an hour earlier but it took all the extra time to chew.

The rice and beans were passable but nothing special.

My wife had a taco salad that was equally disappointing -- topped with the same sad excuse for fajita meat. And they forgot her side.

My son's chicken fajitas were so dry they should come with a bottle of Gatorade on the side to prevent dehydration.

The service was bad, though not really the server's fault. She had too many people to take care of and a kitchen that didn't seem to be able to get food out and keep orders straight.

While we were still waiting for our food to arrive, she started telling other customers that they just ran out of both fajita and chicken. So, I can only hope what we got was the absolute worst, bottom of the barrel they've ever served since it was all they had left. If what we got represented their usual quality, it was so bad that this place simply doesn't deserve to have customers. Nobody should be paying for that "food".

Either way, the people who came in after they had run out of both fajita and chicken were actually lucky they didn't have to be served such garbage as we were.

Don't eat here. You can get way better food almost anywhere. You could even do better eating at Taco Bell, and that's...

The wife and I had huevos Rancheros and they were excellent. The Ranchero sauce was real Ranchero sauce which you find in very few restaurants nowadays. The owner came over to the table and visited with us for a while and asked what we had ordered. I told him we ordered the huevos Rancheros and he asked if I like menudo and I replied that I love menudo but I don't order it since most restaurants make terrible menudo. He offered me a taste and I was pleasantly surprised, it was excellent. We got to take a bit more and the conversation turned to barbacoa. He asked the waiterous to bring me a taco and it too was great. It was made with beef cheek not roast as many places make it. Barbacoa made with roast is tasty but dry. I grew up eating barbacoa made with beef cheeks and I won't eat it any other way. Be warned, this is a humble place, what most folks would call a hole in the wall. But I found it to be a very comfortable place to eat. It's not a fast food restaurant, so some may consider the service to be slow, but I found the experience to be...