El Salto Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in North Township

Maaaan I really don't like totally trashing a place but I just didn't find much I thought was good here. First off, it's LOUD. Like the music is really loud. 2nd, our waitress barely spoke English. Welp, I don't speak spanish so between the language barrier and the music, communication was pretty much impossible. I ordered a margarita and was quizzed on sizes which I could not understand. I finally just agreed to w/e she said. I also tried to order a Long Island Iced Tea. This request was met with complete confusion. She went and retrieved another waitress that apparently was more fluent in English who was able to understand my request. (I guess) I was soon brought a watery yellowy drink that I am pretty sure had 0 alcohol and def did not taste like a LIT. I think it was water, mixed with iced tea, and some lemon thrown in. VERY uncool. Chips n salsa brought promptly, so that's great. The salsa was very good, hada nice kick, nice flavor. The chips not so much. They are the dark, thick generic tortilla chips u get from poppin open any bag of such at the grocery store. They are not fresh fried on site. Disappointing. I ordered CAMARONES A LA DIABLA $20 Grilled shrimp, sauteed in a mild or spicy sauce served with lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, rice, beans and tortilla. Mild. My husband ordered steak quesadillas. The strawberry frozen margarita was BOMB! Excellent. The food came out in a shockingly fast time period. I mean maybe 5-6 mins tops. I saw other reviews raving about this. Who gripes about bein served too quickly, right?? Well there is only one explanation for how this could be possible--- all the food is already cooked and sitting around to be compiled. It is NOT freshly prepared. God knows how long it's been sitting around, and consequently, that's exactly what it tasted like! My shrimp was SO overdone they coulda been used for hockey pucks. I did not care for the weird indescribable sauce they sat in. I would much rather wait a few mins and have my food made freshly and correctly. I guess I am a minority and others don't know when food is overdone. My husband's steak was somehow still soft and good quality, but also terribly over cooked with 0 seasonings. HELLA bland. Even the beans were just meh. And the rice!! LOL These mexican restaurants must be getting some kinda crazy discount on rice marketed to them and ASIAN joints because, of course it was not freshly made and contained green peas! Now is mexican rice EVER made with green peas? No. It is not. Yet this is not an isolated event. I have noticed this in several mexican joints I have chanced to try. It is not a trend I'm in favor of. It is very weird and just does not belong. We had to ask for to-go boxes (for the dog) AND request the check after that... Normally u ask for boxes and it's common knowledge the meal is over, u need the ticket so u can pay n leave. Finally, we were gratuitized 18%! For TWO ppl!! I get this is standard procedure necessary for large parties, but I have never before seen it automatically added to a small party bill. We normally tip at least 20%, but after realizing things had already been decided for us, with no care of our feelings, we begrudgingly paid the ticket as-is. sigh I don't know why I continue to search for GOOD mexican food north o the Mason-Dixon line. So maybe I sound way overly critical or just have much higher standards from it, being from Texas and even the chains there like On The Border have excellently seasoned authentic...

My family has come to El Salto twice so far. The last impression left a bit of a sour taste (proverbially) in everyone's mouth. Food is good/unremarkable but serviceable. It seemed like a friendly-ish atmosphere, until after our last meal.

Their policy is to charge 18% gratuity on all of their meals as a service charge on top of the price. This is a bit dodgy, but fair enough.

The thing is, non-vigilant diners might (and I suspect often do) overlook this tidbit on the check and simply go forward tipping as if they were adding their normal amount for gratuity. This is where we found ourselves tonight, effectively paying 40 percent more for the meal. When my brother and I realized this, he went back to correct our check (we split halfway) and while he was doing that, the server, who was privy to the conversation he was having with her and the cleaning staff, snatched up my portion of the ticket and absconded with it away to the kitchen. She later placed it on top of the processing pile. My brother was diligent and instructed her to make sure my ticket reflected what I wanted to pay (a 20% total tip on the meal) to which she responded with what he described to be quite a rude glare. She then aggressively balled up the ticket and threw it into the trash. The error was corrected and we no longer had the larger obligation, but not after some consternation with management.

I also suspect people will understand the 18% but then calculate the extra 2 percent for any extra gratuity based off of a total that includes the gratuity already added. This effectively inflates the price, I'm sure, as well.

It kind of seems like this is an eventuality that the wait staff have come to count on, and that is not cool. You should also make sure that the wait staff understand that a moderately larger tip isn't worth the implication of theft, and the possibility that patrons will have to go and interact with management and will actively choose to no longer eat at the restaurant.

Needless to say, we probably...

We had a dinner here for my moms birthday this past Sunday and had 20 of our family and friends come out for the special occasion and it was absolutely embarrassing. First, they had one of our tables separated from the rest of the party because of how their servers are set up. Julianna the manager explained they are not allowed to move tables and seemed annoyed that we even asked. She did state that they could not accommodate a party this big even though the manager who took the reservation said it was no problem. During our actual meal, one of our guests cut their lip on a piece of silverware that had metal slivers. The server quickly took the fork and never returned with it. Juliana came over and asked if there was blood and inquired why didn’t she look at the fork before using it. She then annoyingly stated she would take the meal off but then did not. Another one of our guests received his meal 20 minutes after dinner was served, the server apologized and said he would take the dinner off but again he did not. After we received the $400+ bill we asked about the 2 meals that were supposed to be taken off, Juliana stated she would not take them off. She took the bill and would not give us a copy of the bill because she was “unable too”. My dad being nice just paid and didn’t want to cause anymore issues on my moms birthday. Overall this was a terrible experience and clearly we will never go back to this establishment. I do have to say the bartender working that Sunday night was very nice, understanding and accommodating. She was apologetic about the experience even though she was not involved. This would be the only reason for 1 star if not it...