El Rodeo Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Manheim Township

I will not be eating here anymore! Most recent restaurant inspection- Feb. 9. Fail. The person in charge did not demonstrate adequate knowledge as evidenced by not complying with the Pennsylvania Food Code and having multiple priority item violations during this inspection. The person in charge did not demonstrate adequate knowledge of the Pennsylvania Food Code as evidenced by incorrect responses to food safety questions. The person in charge has failed in their duties by not ensuring employees are washing their hands prior to donning gloves, washing utensils and food equipment correctly, and not allowing employees to eat in the kitchen. Several containers of food in the walk-in cooler and the three-door cooling unit stored open with no covering. Food debris and burnt crumbs beneath the flat grill. An accumulation of old food splatter inside the microwave. No chemical sanitizer being used on equipment and utensils after washing and rinsing them and prior to use. Water leaking from a pipe beneath the dump sink. Food employee involved in food preparation wearing a wristwatch in the wait-station. The floor in the dishwashing area is severely cracked, broken and some tiles are missing. Lights are not shielded or shatterproof over the food preparation area in the kitchen. Refrigerated, ready-to-eat, time/temperature-control-for-safety food (meat and sauce) prepared in the food facility and held for more than 24 hours located in the walk-in cooler is not being date marked. A container marked “gasoline” 😧 stored in the storage area. The floor/wall juncture in the employee restroom is not coved and closed to 1/32 inch. No sign or poster posted at the hand-wash sink in the women’s room and at the bar to remind food employees to wash their hands. Food employee constantly wiping gloved hands on...

First off, I don't review just any restaurant. I only do so when I have a fantastic experience or a horrible one. This trip was the latter of the two. Absolutely horrible. There was a large hair in our salsa. We ate half of it before finding it. Yuck! Then we get our appetizer without any silverware or napkins. After we ask one person for silverware and napkins, it took too long so we had to ask someone else. Once the food came out only 1/3 dishes were made correctly. My sons burrito came with everything when we specifically ordered only meat cheese and rice with nothing on top. It took three different plates and it still had cheese on top of it. (Not a huge big deal in my mind but he is picky and we ordered it that way on purpose). By the third plate we said fine and he didn't even eat it anyway. $16 down the drain there. Next up was my wife's trio seafood tacos, which the menu said comes with a homemade seafood sauce. There was no sauce and when we asked about it they said it doesn't come with any and looked at us like we were crazy. My wife went and got the menu to make sure we weren't actually the "loco" ones and IT DID list there should be the seafood sauce. We showed it to our waitress and thought it was resolved, but wait it gets better. The manager then came to our table with some hot sauce instead of seafood sauce and asked what we wanted. I told her we wanted the "homemade seafood sauce" that was listed in the menu. Again, we get the crazy look. I get up and get a menu and have to point it out to her. What the hell... Update your menu, put a hairnet on the cooks, and at least get the order right from the customer. Never again will I spend a cent in this establishment; I think you should consider doing...

Update: Since things have been opening up a little more, we’ve dined in a few times where we’ve seen the waitresses coming back who are familiar from before the pandemic and the experiences have been pretty positive so far. We haven’t tried takeout or delivery again just yet, but I’ll update again when we do. Keep up the good work going forward, El Rodeo!

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Compared to the other locations, we’ve always kind of thought the Lancaster one was a tad on the subpar side. They never even put vegetables in with their rice when the other locations do, but now that we moved to Lancaster and have had several experiences with this El Rodeo, we’ve really seen how much they do not care about the customer at all. Not one, single order we’ve had has been correct, we’ve had them give us someone else’s order completely, and my sons went to pickup an order about a week ago where a guy made them wait while he finished watching videos on his phone. The other day, I called to place an order (you have to for the margaritas to go now) and was placed on hold for 10 minutes while we listened to the guy serve a bunch of people coming in, and then he just hung up the phone! What happened on Cinco de Mayo could be a review in and of itself, but the short version is that there were people waiting there for 4+ hours for food that they were told they couldn’t cancel and the staff made a bad situation worse by being rude and nasty to everyone, even when most of the people were trying not to be mean. I even sent an email about our experiences through the contact link on the website and received absolutely...