Teresa's Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Mendota Heights

Normally love this place, but last time we went was very disappointing. we showed up on a Friday night (TOTALLY expecting the place to be busy which it was) and asked to sit on the patio. They were clearly short staffed, which is fine. We waited patiently, for quite a while for someone to come over and take our drink order. They messed up my husbands drink order, but we let it go assuming things were probably a little crazy inside at the bar. It took FOREVER for him to come back (almost like we were forgotten) to take our food order. When we did, it took an incredibly long time- again- to get our food. My husband was the only one who ordered, and his food was ICE cold. I finally went inside and expressed to the host our food was cold and that I understood they were busy but wasn't sure why his food sat for so long. (again, we were most likely forgotten). She looked at me like I was crazy and said she didn't know what to do for me.... How about find my waiter and see if we can solve it?? The waiter came out to our table, and was honestly kind of rude asking what was wrong. We explained the food was cold, and he literally took it inside and microwaved it. The plate was burning hot by the time it came back. The manager finally came out to talk to us and express his apologies in kind of an awkward manner, and said we would not be charged for the food. When the waiter came back to our table, he expressed CLEAR frustration that we were not being charged and kept saying "he didn't know what was going on". Well... what's going on is our service sucked. ANY amount of communication would have improved our experience. A simple "I apologize, we are understaffed, it may take longer for you to get your food or be served." Instead we had to guess that this was the case...

Honestly, the only word that I can use to summarize my experience is "fiasco". I was between meetings and so just stopped in for a quick bite. The food itself, I ordered one of the do-it-yourself combo plates (which, btw, wasn't offered on the menu in the same way as it was in their website, and when I pointed that out, they admitted it, so I can't be the first person to have pointed it out - but no offer to honor the web version, so... that feels deceptive. Wouldn't it be better to just update your website?) Anyway, the meal, which was, at best, mediocre, was probably the only decent part of the experience. Starting with the dirty napkin-wrapped fork (which the waiter immediately replaced and apologized, so let's forgive that, but... just turn up the temperature of the dishwasher, please!) to the forgotten "super-garnish" which I had to request a total of four times, and by the time it arrived I'd eaten more than half the meal, so... And ending with the extremely inappropriate way that I was treated by the hostess (I suspect that might have been Teresa herself, though I hope it wasn't, I guess I would think that a restaurant owner would be more appreciative of new clients, who might just become steady ones) who came to the table to find out, "what the problem was?". Really? Now, I see the place generally has a quite high rating overall, so maybe they are complacent with past success or, benefit of the doubt, I just caught them on a bad day, it was just a series of unfortunate coincidences. At any rate I won't be returning to find out. Best of luck to all, hope you don't have the same...

It's been awhile since we've been at this location, used to love it but this probably will be the last there was 7 of us celebrating my sisters birthday and our waiter Juan was the rudest waiter ever when getting ready to order we wanted separate checks he didn't like that idea and he wanted to start at one end of the table but my cuz wasn't ready so we told him to start at the other end but instead he got upset and said I'll come back when your all ready and constantly checking his watch like he was timing us then when we ordered drinks we didn't get what we ordered didn't listen to what we ordered I wanted a burrito and I got a taco and enchilada still checking the time and when I reminded him about the birthday he brought my sister a shot of tequila and slammed the sombrero on her head and that was it didn't have anyone sing to her or nothing but the people on the other side got all the staff to sing but he didn't care at all then he got a couple of our bills wrong and treated like it was our fault and then I paid with cash and he never came back with my change it was only a couple bucks but the point was he never thanked any of us never asked if our food was good we had to flag him down when wanted a refill on drinks never gave us waters the only reason he got a tip was because it was already added to the bills otherwise none of us wanted to leave a tip it was the worst service ever and thats to bad we always had quite a few people with us celebrating birthday's but we will be finding a new place to...