El Torito — Restaurant in Monterey

This place initially went on my radar because one of my friends told me about this place. He had the buffet, and said it was one of the best buffets he had been to. I was unaware that the buffet was only on Sunday, so I didn't get to experience it.

The chips & salsa were complimentary as is typical with a sit-down Mexican restaurant. While they were decent, I have had much better. The chips were really thin, so I don't know if they are made in house. Typically, the house made ones are thicker. The salsa was ok but was nothing special, as I have had a lot more impressive salsas in my life.

I ordered the carnitas taco and a skirt steak quesadilla. The guacamole & Pico de gallo that came with the quesadilla were both average at best. The Pico didn't taste very fresh and was bland, like something was missing. I don't know if it was an ingredient, or if it just tasted off because it wasn't fresh. I have bought Pico de gallo at supermarkets, and have noticed the quality tends to drop off pretty quickly after a few days of sitting in a fridge. It is possible this restaurant does not make it fresh every day, but without working there who knows? I didn't have much guacamole, but about 1/4 of the dollop they gave me was a large chunk of avocado, so the prep cooks got a bit lazy.

The carnitas taco was pretty decent. It was nothing extremely noteworthy, but it was a little better than average. The skirt steak quesadilla was also pretty good, but nothing amazing enough to make me want to come back here.

The service was garbage - I went on a Wednesday at 2:45 PM with a restaurant that wasn't even half-filled, so I don't know if the staff is lazy, incompetent, or the owner understaffs them. I would think a typically busy restaurant in a tourist town would be a little more on it when the restaurant isn't even close to full capacity. I waited at the front for 10+ minutes with a line of several people forming behind me because the hostess wasn't there. A busser eventually notices us and grabs a manager, which conveniently as soon as he does she walks out of a bathroom that is placed right next to his office.

Next, a server takes around 10 minutes before even greeting me. I leave my jacket at the table and go upstairs to the bathroom, come back and find a busser putting my chips & salsa on a cart, then he realizes it's a mistake and puts it back on the table just as I'm about to tell him to stop doing that. The a la carte taco (appetizer) comes out as I am one bite away from finishing my entree, and I was going to flag the server down and tell them to just take it off my order. Could be all honest mistakes but I am never going to this restaurant again; the sluggishness is unbecoming of a dine-in restaurant that should be used to high volume.

Also, because you have to pay for parking near this restaurant it was even more annoying because I didn't want my meter to run out. I saw the 4.3 rating and already wasn't impressed, but went there off the recommendation of a friend as stated in the beginning of this review. The only way I'd ever come back is if someone else paid for my meal. I used to work restaurants, and if expected wait times are going to be slow I would communicate that to the customer, which nobody could do here. The only reason I am giving them 3 stars instead of 1 is because I tend to rate on the quality of the food as opposed to the service, and while not super impressive in taste I have also...

Judge a book by its cover! the appearance of the building and the empty lot beside it foreshadow your experience inside. And be forewarned: Children in strollers not welcome.

We called to ask about parking, and they hung up on us. We called back and got the answer to our question. A one-off?

Arrived and they said to leave the stroller at the door. That would've been fine except baby was about to fall asleep so logistically we wanted the stroller. She said the stroller wasn't safe beside the table because it was a tripping hazard. I looked around and saw a restaurant 75% empty and about 5' wide aisles. Didn't add up to me as we'd been at a packed restaurant earlier in the day that had no qualms about having a stroller. She then said she figured we could sit in the far corner where the stroller would be out of the way.

It definitely felt like we were relegated to the corner the entire time!

We sat there for about 15 minutes waiting for our server. Someone brought us chips and salsa/pico de gallo to start. We just about finished them when our server finally came to take our order, including asking us about drinks!

We put in our order specifically asking that the starter come first. She said "it should!" Which I immediately understood to mean "it might not." We asked for more salsa/pico as well.

More pico never came. Like she completely ignored/forgot! She came to check on us while we munched on chips and by that time we'd flagged down another server and gotten some more. She never acknowledged that she hadn't brought us more, or that we didn't have any cutlery or napkins to start like other tables did. So When she came to check on us we asked for napkins. She said sure... and literally went back to the server booth and started sweeping! So we took napkins from another table 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

While still waiting, we again flagged her down and asked again that starters come first, as her response the first time was not reassuring! She said "it should" and that she would go check and again never acknowledged she'd not brought us cutlery or more napkins! So weird!

She came back saying the kitchen had messed up orders and it would likely all come out at the same time. 5 min later our orders came... warm! So they'd been sitting there before she even brought them. This is all with a restaurant at 25% capacity and LOTS of staff milling around! So our starter (and whole meal really) didn't come until 45m after arriving. And she didn't come check on us until we were mostly done eating.

When we were done she was no where to be seen ... we waited... and then got up and went and waited by the server booth... asked for the bill, paid, and left.

As you can tell, not impressed with service. Strollers not welcome, service not attentive, warm, or even helpful. Found the food quite dull and uninteresting, and not as attractive as the photos we saw on reviews! View isn't spectacular which was the selling point, even after reading some reviews here.

Would recommend not coming here... find somewhere else that you'll enjoy!

And, to the person Kyle who responds to everyone's posts asking us to email them...a) how does that solve anything and b) where were you when I needed you - IN PERSON?! C) the reviews have a consistent theme over time so clearly you're not changing anything...

Just don't... Whatever you do, don't come here, the views are not worth the horrible service experience... I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself but this is now my third time here and each time I hoped that the previous experience was a fluke but now after three times of the same experience, I'm convinced it's a fault of the management.

There are much better Mexican places in the area, support local small businesses. Each experience at this place starts with us walking in and told there is a wait to get a table this is despite the fact that more than 50% of the tables are empty, so just expect a 5-15 minute wait to go to a table. Then once seated expect to not get anyone to come ask for drinks or water for another 10-15 minutes. If you come Monday thru Friday between 4-7pm eat in the bar area because they don't honor their happy hour prices in the area where it takes forever to order food. When they finally came to get our order, we got drinks and food for the kids. The children's food came out pretty fast but it was missing the chicken which we had asked for... Our round of drinks from the server were also screwed up, blackberry margarita vs blackberry mojito... Our Mexican street corn came out 45 minutes after we ordered it and it appeared to just been overboiled corn, no seasoning whatsoever on it… just plain corn… yum…

Going back to the 10-15 minutes to get someone to come to our table, at the 10-minute point, we finally asked the server if we could order some food as she was walking by.  She was incredibly good at avoiding eye contact. This seemed to have irritated her and as a result she brought us the spiciest salsa we have ever had at a restaurant. We were more convinced of this later on when at about the 1 hour and 15 minute point of waiting for food she came over and brought us a refill of chips and non-spicy salsa (see photo for the difference in appearance). Keep in mind we did not ask for spicy or non-spicy salsa each time. Please also keep in mind, our server was only working 2-3 tables the whole night, she wasn’t overwhelmed.

Our night ultimately ended in disappointment because after 1.5 hours of waiting for our food we finally gave up and asked to settle our bill and leave the food because we had to get home due to the children… Sure enough, right after we did this our “food” was ready but it was too late.  The restaurant was nice and gave us our food to go and covered the bill for us. One of the reasons we kept coming back despite the service issues mentioned throughout this review was because the food is pretty good. As one final “gotcha” from this restaruant, when we had finally got home and the children in bed, we opened our food to find that 75% of it was wrong… One member of our party ordered a salad, there were no salads… One member of our party ordered a burrito, which came correct but all the peppers and onions inside of it were uncooked, our third meal was completely missing and in its place was a meal that appeared to be someone’s leftovers and finally the fourth meal was correct.  We kept trying to give this place our money and but they seemed to not want it.  Your money is better off spent at a local Mexican food place.

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Very...