Elote Mexican Bar & Grille — Restaurant in Missoula

(Sad to have a response to my review not even acknowledging the fact of their poor food handling. Update this review I had some major gastrointestinal issues after eating here. 100% will never be back. Be warned you are rolling the dice. My wife didn’t get sick I did, must have been either the chicken or the queso) When you walk in the appearance of this restaurant is pretty nice. It is visually appealing. My issues are with the service and the food specifically. I also have a small child this place is not child friendly. No offer for a kids cup for water, no kids menus. It’s not the biggest deal but if you aren’t kid friendly just put something about it.

Now the food/service. We sat down and it took a while after the waiter brought us water for him to come back and ask if we wanted anything else. There were not many tables active at the time, possibly had 2, there were three servers from what I saw and only about 8 total tables. Again asked for drinks and ignored my child. Drinks came one at a time there were two sodas and two beers. One soda came then two to three minutes later another then the beers a few minutes after that. I get that there are bar waits for the beers but bringing out sodas in that fashion very weird. We then a few minutes later were asked for our order, I got the chicken nachos they sounded great. I was so wrong. The food comes and I go to grab a piece of chicken off my plate first off it was weirdly cubed and the first thing I noticed was it was hard and cold. The chicken was over cooked and seemed like they pre cooked it cut it up and then warm it back up on the grill to serve. Only problem is it seemed like they forgot to warm it back up. The queso that they put on it was also cold like they didn’t microwave it enough. It was physically cold to the touch. I told this to who I think is some type of manager because he is the one who served us (not our waiter) he said no problem I’ll fix it for you. He took my plate for a while and when he brought it back it was very hot…. Because he microwaved it. The sour cream that was on top of my nachos was melted and my chips were soggy from the sauce heating on my chips. Like how unacceptable to serve me cold food then to stick the whole plate in the microwave with sour cream on it. It’s nachos you messed up.. make a new plate and make it right. Also to serve pre cooked chicken that you overcooked already and then not warm it up to at least make it look like you overcooked it to order is just sloppy. This place is absolutely disgusting. From management down it’s a problem. The server also only came back one more time and to bring us a check. It’s no wonder they only had a couple tables in there and there wasn’t a wait to be seated. I should have...

I came into elote with 2 female friends and my friend who works there joined us when she got off. Throughout us being there, a man at the bar was staring at us the entire time, even fully turning around to openly stare at us. My friend made a comment to our server about how it was making us uncomfortable, and our server told the man to leave us alone, which he took as an invitation to approach our table. Hands on our table, blocking my exit, directly in front of my face. I told him multiple times to leave us alone, he was taking it as a complete joke and acted as though we were egging him on for attention. I got louder as I continued to ask him to leave our table, thinking a manager would notice and come ask him to leave. That didn’t happen, and when he finally left us alone he threateningly said “I will remember all of you”. A few minutes later, one of the managers came up to our table and started accusing us of claiming that his other bartender roofied us, and accused us of instigating the entire situation (turns out the creepy guy was a contractor for the building). The roofying comment was a boldface lie, and we were all very confused. It was obvious that the creepy man went to the managers when he left our table and made something up to save face. Rather than asking us if we were okay or asking what happened, the manager just accused us of things that were completely untrue and was belittling my friend who works there for attempting to defend us. My friend who works there went to talk to the managers and we were left alone as everyone stared at us and gossiped but no one asked us what happened/ for our side of the story. We asked our server for the bill so we could leave an extremely uncomfortable and ridiculous situation. A different manager then came up to us and said “if you aren’t going to pay you need to leave.” Then he told us that our server claimed we were refusing to pay. We continued to wait for the bill, still extremely confused. The creepy guy got an apology and the managers tried to blame the entire situation on myself, my friends, and their own employee. I like Pangea/stave and hoop, but the owners made a mistake in who they hired to manage elote, it is clearly a work environment that values opinion and reputation of misogynistic men over customer experience and the safety of women, even those who...

I have been to elote twice now. First time was a Friday night with my family of 4 and my in laws and the 2nd time was just me and the hubby for happy hour. Both times service and food/ drinks were excellent. The first time we went I had steak fajitas, my husband had enchiladas, my son had a hamburger off the kids menu and my daughter had a quesadilla. My in laws had the steak and shrimp fajitas. We also shared their bean, guacamole and queso appetizer and tres leches cake dessert. We had margaritas and sangria too. All was so good. I grew up in Scottsdale, AZ and so this is all my jam. I was so hoping it would be good and it totally met all my expectations! Also really appreciate the complimentary chips and salsa. The chips are so light and crispy and addictive! The second time my husband and I went and sat and the bar and each got 2 house margaritas on happy hour. Strong and delicious! Pro tip: the frozen one is stronger! And love that the bartenders gave us chips and salsa even though we weren’t technically dining there. We probably wouldn’t have been thirsty enough for a second round if it wasn’t for those ;-) Ambiance and service has also been great both times!! I want you to be successful so I do have a couple things I think you could work on. First off when I used the bathroom it was very messy. Trash was over flowing and just dirty. Made me feel like I was back at Red Robin. There were many employees that night so maybe worth training the hostess to check and tidy up bathrooms hourly. It’s such a beautiful restaurant and bathrooms need to match the experience!

Also a drink suggestion… a huge margarita hit back in AZ is the Chambord margarita. So you take your house margarita and put a chambord floater on top. It would be so delicious and make you really stand out with margaritas offered elsewhere. Please do it! Trust me! And food suggestion. There needs to be more than just nachos on your happy hour menu. You got some competition w mustard seed hh next door. Add some Elote, a quesadilla and maybe something like street tacos. While we loved our drinks and chips for happy hour we would have definitely gotten something if there was something other than nachos on the menu. Anyways thank you for making me feel at home! So happy...