Picante Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Painesville

I was excited to try this place as Painesville has a surprisingly large number of great, authentic Mexican restaurants. The food was decent, better than the larger chain Mexican places. But the preparation and service left a bit to be desired. I had the tacos and the steak burrito. Rice and beans were okay, beans were not homemade. I liked the steak burrito: the meat had a good flavor and was tender, but I couldn’t enjoy it fully because it wasn’t at all hot. The cheese was not even melted. Now, it took them quite a bit of time to bring it out me, and I don’t know how long it sat, but the cheese on my refried beans had never melted. It looked like they sprinkled shredded cheese on lukewarm beans – so it wasn’t ever hot. Everyone in my party also had cold food. The service was slow in general, but there were a good bit of people in there when I arrived, and they had a lot of takeout orders. I don’t generally get impatient about waiting; however, to bring me cold food is unacceptable, and no one ever came back to my table to ask if my food was okay. The wait staff didn’t really walk around the room to ask anyone if they needed anything. Other things, like the bathroom soap dispenser being out, a paper towel machine that didn’t work, and the general condition of the place just make me think they aren’t very attentive. They had a lot of staff in there; so I don’t think lack of help is the problem. There were two servers for maybe eight tables, and four more people in the kitchen, and they weren’t slammed. I might try it again; anyone can have a bad night, but I think they need to be better organized and...

Yikes. I was so excited to try this place; I live nearby and Mexican food is one of my favorites. What an utter disappointment. When we sat down, there was one other table in the restaurant. It took our server quite a while to take our drink orders. My boyfriend and I both got pop. She brings us two cans of pop, no glass, no straw, no ice. Then we get our chips and salsa. The chips were hot and fresh but the salsa was so runny like nothing I've ever had before. I mean runny like water, not just a little too thin. We waited a considerable amount of time to get our food and when it was brought, we did not get any utensils. After about three minutes I had to find our server to get them which was a little frustrating. I ordered tacos and a quesadilla. I have to say, the presentation was really nice and the food looked delicious! Unfortunately, looks are deceiving. My ground beef tacos were just that, ground beef. No seasoning at all and it was very bland. And due to the watery salsa, we could not put it on our tacos which was disappointing because who doesn't want salsa on their tacos? I took the first two bites of my quesadilla and got mouthfuls of potatoes. That was odd to me so I opened it up and found that they put potatoes in the meat and I had about 85% potatoes...and a nice long hair cooked into it. Needless to say, I left still hungry. I would normally give a place a second chance but considering everything here was disappointing from beginning to end, this restaurant is off my list. I wish this could have been a better review but our experience was a huge fail all...

I came in with my Bf and his family we aren’t from around here, but we saw this place and it had some nice reviews so we decided to give it a try! We came in and we first weren’t even greeted, the host just stared us down, we sat down and she eventually came over and gave us our menus, didn’t ask what we wanted to drink first. The server had no excitement whatsoever, really just no emotion. Maybe she was having a bad day?Few mins later she came and asked us for our order and drinks. Food was good, reasonable price. Just the service...