Hwy 2 Fusion Diner — Restaurant in Monroe

Had an hour to kill so decided to pay a visit since a lot of reviews mentioned a great breakfast burrito. Unfortunately, after I sat down to look over the menu, I realized that for God knows what pea-brained reason, they only serve burritos on weekdays. I settled on the Machaca, as the description made it sound like a flavor packed new dish I'd never heard of.

At this point I put my menu down to signal I was ready to place my order. About 30 minutes later, literal seconds before I gave up and walked out without paying for my coffee, my order was taken. I was a bit unhappy at this point as I needed to leave fairly soon, but looked forward to the fresh ingredients and tasty dish promised on the menu.

Unfortunately, the "Fresh onions and tomatoes" were completely obliterated and tasteless, the beef was practically unseasoned (there may have been some black pepper and garlic, though not enough of either) and the whole thing was essentially a pile of slop held together by enough fat to rend into candles to supply a 100 year old's birthday cake. I'm not sure what they did to the beans, but I don't think I want to.

Had I not been in a rush, I would have sent this 'meal' back to the kitchen and gotten something more edible, but unfortunately I had requested to get this to go due to the time it took to even place my order. If I was eating at the table, I genuinely would have refused to pay for this. To top it off, as soon as I got home I was sick for a few hours with either mild food poisoning or just a reaction to eating that much beef fat in one sitting (I did unfortunately eat about half of the food as I was rushing to get to an appointment and needed to eat something).

I don't know why this place being attached to a gas station wasn't more of a red flag for me, but please save yourselves from the misfortune of being asked to tip 30% for service worse than a late night gas station in...

What can I say about this place? Well, I’ll start with. It is highly underrated. My fiancé and I stopped in there for lunch one afternoon. We had only been there once during the pandemic for a very quick breakfast. So stopping here on the way home was a lot different from that day. I ordered Carnitas with flour tortillas. I honestly don’t even know what to say about them, they were absolutely incredible. I have quite a few Hispanic friends and their families have cooked for me and I’ve never had Carnitas quite like theirs. The flavor was the best I’ve ever had out of pork. I honestly could go on and on about how absolutely delicious they were. But I’m gonna cut to the end of this. When I was done and had cleared my entire plate, I was very upset because I had no leftovers for dinner. My fiancé who doesn’t even like pork that much taste in mine and couldn’t believe how good it was. We ended up doing something unique and I don’t know if it was the manager or the owner but he was very kind, he allowed me to order just a pound of their pork to take home. He didn’t even have a protocol for that because no one had ever asked that. We took it home and made tacos and they were a 20 out of 10! I have now been back there several times and ordered this exact same thing, when I don’t feel like cooking meat or getting it out of the freezer, stop in there and grab some Carnitas. These guys are amazing....

My initial impression was good - you'd never know it was in a gas station. I've seen such good reviews and love a good little café. We were sat next to the bathrooms, which smelled terrible. The waitress moved us, then let us know that the mens room was out of service.

I ordered the huevos rancheros, a dish I order very frequently when brunching - and they were the worst I have ever had. The eggs (ordered over medium) were over easy, and were completely swimming in a red sauce. Half of the plate was this red soup. The tortillas were completely soggy, and the eggs ran into the sauce, which was so terribly hot (and I enjoy a good amount of spice) that it was inedible.

We got the check, and put out our card to pay. Someone made sure to come by and tell us that we needed to pay up front.... uh, ok? We were the only table in the whole restaurant. Our waitress was literally just walking around. Wouldn't it have been better service to just grab the check and cash out your table? Instead, I got up, went and stood at the front, where nobody was standing, to wait for my server until she came up to cash us out. It felt arbitrary and truly absurd.

Maybe if it was busy? Sure. If our waitress was busy with other tables? Sure. I dunno, it just really rubbed us the wrong way. We really want to find great places to eat in Monroe, but this place just missed the mark turn after turn, and we...