Xaviers Casa Reynoso — Restaurant in Mesa

I want to preface this by saying, I have been eating at “Casa Raynoso’s” in Tempe since I was a very little girl. My relatives are aquatences with Joanne and family at that location. We always get as much salsa and chips our little hearts desire and always enjoy our food and service. Now XAVIERS review: We visit Xavier’s at times to get our Casa fix without having to drive to Tempe since we live way East valley. Today we had a server named Kat. We were promptly sat by a friendly blonde gal who we will call “salsa girl”. She served us a bowl of chips half filled and two tiny salsas for the FOUR of us dining. No big deal...we always ask for extra salsa. Our server Kat took our order with our drink order because we were sitting there long enough to figure that all out. I told her my two children would each have one adult sized burritos...and to avoid any confusion I made sure to be very specific...two adult burritos...they will each have one. She walked away saying okay I’ll bring an extra plate. 🤔...so at the time we were placing our order, we had already consumed all of our half a bowl of chips and two tiny bowls of salsa and had asked Kat for more of both while placing our order. At least 5 mins goes by and I’m thinking (since it’s not busy and we ordered 4 waters)...what was taking so long. I remembered that she’s also getting us more chips and salsa so no big deal. Kat reruns with two adult cups of water and two kids cups of water for my 7&8 year old and starts to walk away. I had to say, “excuse me..could we get a few straws please”. She gave us two cups with lids on them for goodness sakes. And then I kindly ask again for more chips and salsa...she replies, “another girl will get you that.” She goes back to the kitchen and I look at the assumed salsa girl cleaning off a table...not looking like she’s aware that we are in need of more. I wait another five minutes watching the salsa girl seat people, give salsa and chips out, running all around the restaurant. I go back to the kitchen area where all three “girls” are located now and ask which one of them was supposed to be getting us our chips n salsa. Our server Kat is literally standing back there DOING NOTHING while salsa girl is getting things for another table...and says “she(salsa girl) is”. Salsa girl looks up at Kat doing NOTHING like she had no idea she needed to get us any. Salsa girl then promptly gets us our stuff and is pleasant. Kat delivers our food and they put both bean burritos on one plate and gives my son an extra tiny plate. Now I have to try to get this scorching, slathered in butter, burrito from that plate to the extra plate I never asked for without tearing it and getting completely buttery 🤦🏻‍♀️ Then she doesn’t even ask if we need anything else or how our food is tasting. We get her attention and ask for more chips and salsa and she said they would have to charge us for more chips. Um okay??? Never got any limits on our chips and salsa consumption before...okay we will pay for it since we want some more. The two tacos I had to order a la carte for $4.25 EACH were emaciated and couldn’t have any less meat in there without there being absolutely no meat in them. Then our server dropped off the check and didn’t even ask if we needed a box for our leftover $3.50 cent extra bowl of chips we had to buy. I had to ask her for one as she was walking away. The sweet salsa girl came over while we were waiting and asked us if we needed a box for our leftovers. At that point I said no but I appreciate your positive attitude and all your help (because we had to force Kat to do anything for us 😒) and I tipped salsa girl at that point with cash I had on me since she took better care of us than our own server Kat. Kat was utterly lazy. Never once even smiled. Needless to say, WE WILL NOT BE RETURNING. We will go somewhere else where we will be served properly, won’t be NICKLED AND DIMED for things, and will get food quality that matches what we pay for it. Ps. Did you see the review about COCKROACHES in the restaurant?! Nail...

My husband and I came to Xaviers Casa Reynoso based on all the great reviews it had here. We've passed it many times and from the outside it looks like nothing but a doorway in a small strip mall so we never bothered to stop in. Tonight we decided to try it and we were terribly disappointed. Upon opening the door, the dining room is nicely decorated, dim lighting and a moderate sized room with rather plain tables and chairs, but it has a rustic look. I thought maybe we'd hit on a good Mexican restaurant here for a change. We were promptly greeted and seated and a waitress promptly came and took our drink and dinner orders. That was the last time we saw our waitress all evening until she gave us our check later on. They gave us some chips in a plain plastic bowl that looked like it came from the dollar store. The chips were out of a bag, not homemade. It came with a small bowl of salsa which wasn't too bad, watery but it had a little flavor and heat to it. This was the best part of the meal unfortunately. I ordered some guacamole ($3.50) and the waitress brought out a tiny dish of the most watery, tasteless mixture I'd ever encountered. It was pureed avocado with absolutely nothing in it for flavoring other then some hot spice. No garlic, no onions, no tomatoes, no cilantro, nothing. Just hot spice. It was terribly watery at the bottom, brown around the top and there were only about two tablespoons of it (for $3.50...seriously). I'm a HUGE guac fan and I ate a few bites of this and couldn't even eat it. I pushed it aside and hoped that wasn't an omen of things to come. Sadly it was. I ordered the carne asada dinner since I read a review on it saying how it was the best carne asada anyone had ever tasted. I was asked what type of salad dressing I wanted on my salad, I assumed they had some type of Mexican style dressing, perhaps something with a lime or cilantro vinegarette. Their choices were ranch, Italian or French. Very authentic Mexican. NOT. My husband ordered the #9 combo platter with an enchilada and tostada. We waited about 15 or 20 minutes to be served and we were served by an older woman. She served our food and we never saw her again either. There seems to be a theme here of disappearing servers. I will say that the food was about the hottest food (temperature wise) that I've ever seen come out of a restaurant kitchen. That's why I gave them one star, otherwise I'd have given them none. My plate was heaped with several large pieces of carne asada that were very charred, a big helping of rice and beans. I was hopeful yet again. I cut off a few pieces of the carne asada and popped one into my mouth and chewed...and chewed...and chewed....nothing but grizzle, tough as shoe leather. I tried several other pieces but had the same issue. I even cut pieces off of the different slices, still no better. I did not get a single piece of carne asada down my throat, I ended up having to spit every one of them out. In addition, the steak was so spicy I could barely eat that either. In fact, it seems that this place does not know how to marinate or add flavor to anything other then to pour some type of hot spice on it. I gave up trying to eat the carne asada ($15.95 down the tubes) and asked my husband how his dinner was. He said it was "eh". The food was so bad that I left my entire plate, and he left a lot of his as well. No one ever came back to ask us how the food was and in fact we had to wait about a half hour to even get a check which the bus boy got for us. The waitress finally came back to deposit the check on the table, again, never asking how anything was, she just said "here you go", dropped it on the table and left. We could not wait to get out of this place. I don't know who's writing most of the reviews for this restaurant, but this was absolutely the WORST Mexican food we've ever had in our lives (and my husband is half Mexican), and we'd never go back, nor would we recommend it to anyone. It's overpriced, overspiced, overcooked, terrible quality and...

Not happy with my experience.

They posted a small sign at the entrance indicating that there is a 3.50% charge for not paying cash, another small sign indicating that a chip refill is a dollar a bowl. I did not see either of these signs ahead of time and thus was surprised by the extra charges on my check. They also automatically added an 18% tip to my check without notifying us or posting anywhere (that I could see) what qualifies as a large party and is automatically charged a tip amount. Another sign indicated checks couldn't be split because of coronavirus.

I'm not in the practice of reading a handful of printouts taped up by the hostess desk when entering a restaurant and thus was surprised by the charges on the check. This left a sour taste in my mouth.

If there are temporary fees or charges in place or the restaurant charges for things that are customarily not charged at other restaurant, I recommend the waiters indicate these verbally to the party ahead of ordering so theyre not blindsided by the amount that shows up on the check. Do not assume that computer printouts with size 14 font will be read, especially when there's no wait and thus customers are quickly taken to their tables as soon as they enter the restaurant.

The waitress was nice. The place was almost empty on a Tuesday night so food came out quickly. The food was good though in line with the quality of several other Mexican restaurants in the area. Portions weren't that big for the price; I had the chile relleno and tamale. The chile relleno had very little meat in it. ~4 stars based on this but the charge gouging takes it down to three stars. I'll likely choose other establishments...