El Pescador — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Service has never dwindled, but the one knock is the taste. All, if not most, El Pescador locations have or had the same taste in food. But a tell tale sign in long standing Mexican restaurants that things have gone a different direction is simply their Chips and Salsa. Their salsa served as an appetizer is now a watered down memory of what it once was. Their "Rajas con queso" is now a spaghetti string-ed bell pepper of an attempt to what this was a staple for my wife. And gone is the "consumé" a small soup used to be served with every meal, now being nickel-and-dimed to diners. For a Family chain that has redirected their Family restaurants to opening up more cash grabbing bar and grills, it's an embarrament to serve their Tequila cocktails with "Vino de Agave" aka fake Tequila. All this is made up for by the service their staff provides and at the minimum, the entrees were good and quick. I would still come back sometime this next year, but now I know not to hold this place to the prestige that the Ortiz family...

I would suggest not to go with a party larger than 8. We waited for over an hour before we had to finally leave. The little girl that was the hostess felt bad and tried to guage the wait time but the large party before us was not ready to leave anytime soon. Not their problem whatsoever. I blame the management for not apologizing for the wait or offering to split our tables up or even just say they can't accommodate. We tried to give them the benefit of the doubt but the Management totally ignored us whoever they were. We had no clue. The lady next to the register where we were waiting was busy pouring her salsa into about a hundred little condiment cups all lined up one by one and never picked her head up to acknowledge us. She knew we were sitting there salivating over the salsa. 🤤..It was so awkward, rude and the worst customer service I've every experienced. There's no bar to order drinks while you wait either. You have to BE SEATED to have a drink....

I had always had great experiences here, My family and I had been coming to this restaurant for about 13 years. I had never had a bad experience, however this all changed after a new employee, who was the one calling in the families, decided to ignore us for about 3 hours. We sat outside in the cold, since they can only have about 4 people inside the restaurant while you wait to be served. I came in with a group of 14 because we were celebrating on of my siblings birthday, after the new employee finally called us in they attempted to sit us all at different booths around the restaurant, since she had called in various amounts of people during the time the new employee was ignoring us, the large tables they had in the center of the restaurant (which would have sat us all together) were only partially filled. We ended up leaving while the new employee just smiled as if she wanted us to leave. I would not recomend this place for groups larger...