El Callejón De Los Milagros — Restaurant in McAllen

This was my first visit and I doubt there will be a second unless someone invites me here. I'll break it down into three categories: environment, staff, and food.

Environment - the place is lovely. It really is. This place is entertaining, clean, and lively. The colors are vivid and not too overwhelming, the cleanliness of the restaurant is on point - the menus felt clean to the touch, the tables weren't greasy, and the floor was spotless. I didn't sit at the bar, so I won't comment on that. No stars lost on this category.

Staff - we did have to wait a bit longer than usual to get seated despite being the second table there, but it wasn't a big deal. This extra time gave me the opportunity to look around a bit and take in the details. Our waitress was great, friendly, and patient. She kept our glasses full, removed empty plates right away, and did it all swiftly and graciously. No stars lost here.

Food - ok, this is where it all went downhill. Up until this point, I thought I was in a Mexican restaurant. I noticed a lot of interesting items on the menu but figured I'd try a Mexican staple: flautas. Now, I've visited a lot of mexican restaurants, both hole-in-the-wall and higher end. This was the first restaurant that served flautas WITHOUT rice or beans. And to add insult to injury, they served them dry. No cream/guacamole/salsa drizzle on them. These were the saddest flautas I have ever eaten. What the heck do I want sour cream on lettuce for? I'd have even welcomed two dollops of cream and guacamole on the plate or something similar. Instead, I got sliced up avocado and lettuce drizzled with sour cream. And dry, depressing flautas. The cucumber lemonade was great, a bit too concentrated for my taste but great nonetheless. The salsas were tasty and varied...

Just writing my review so any time anyone who wants to enjoy their children’s birthday event or any celebration!! Decides to go somewhere else! We paid almost $370 , no servers attended the table we ran out of drinks ,tortillas and still no service ,,,and we just decide to give up, when we spoke to manager all he did is give us excuses and say nothing he can do , they were charging 15%tip total in each bill was about $18 bucks and finally some bills had $13 tip added to bill. it wasnt even full!! No one 1️⃣ in restaurant! To be even excused that they were busy, We arrived around 7ish and they wouldnt give us a table until guests arrived,and when the guests started to arrive got upset because we had unexpected guests and we needed more chairs😬🤬🤬🤬eventually we realized we were about the only tables without services, we just asked for a bill and requested the manager to fix our bills. According to our service we felt we were whom should decide how much to tip. 👉🏽👉🏽👉🏽ohh and He did nothing to fix it or help with the situation !! We were threatened with cops being called! For not paying the added tip! … LAST TIME WE WILL HAVE DINNER , FOOD, or anything...

The food is delicious, but our waiter was terrible. It took him about 20-30 minutes just to bring me my drink because he forgot. He also forgot to bring my friend’s husband his drink. He was nowhere to be found during that time. He brings my friends their food and one of our items, and he proceeds to disappear for another 20 minutes. When I ask him where the rest of our food is, he tells me he’s been busy and forgot to put the order in. He asked if I still wanted it (I was starving, of course I did), and he then disappeared again. I was only able to have one drink the entire night because of how often he was nowhere to be found. I didn’t even get his name, but it was a bad experience for us. This was on a Wednesday, and there was a lot of empty tables. I don’t understand how he could say he forgot so much when I clearly saw him writing everything down. The worst part was that there were only four of us on the table, and he went and added his own tip to the tab. We were still going to tip because we’re not those type of people, but that definitely made things worse. As much as I love the food, I don’t think I could return based on this...