Blue Mesa Grill — Restaurant in Plano

My husband and I ate here last night, and while we have to concede that the food was absolutely delicious, the service left a bad taste in our mouths.

We walked in, and waited about 5 minutes for the host to come back to the entry. He told us it might be a bit of a wait, about 10-15 minutes, but promptly came back and said he had found a table for us. Yay! We got a nice booth and started looking at our menus.

We waited about another 5-10 minutes before our server even came to introduce himself, and ask for our drinks. We were actually ready to order at that point, but Ethan quickly zipped away. He came back with chips and our drinks, and he was about to walk away again, but we managed to successfully flag him down and tell him we were ready to order.

We ordered a starter, the Mesa Sampler, as well as the goat cheese spinach enchiladas for me, and Churrascaritas for my husband. We waited awhile for food, and enjoyed the chips and salsa - very delicious. During this time, I had finished my drink, and Ethan was nowehere to be found to refill.

After about 15-20 minutes, our food came out, all at once, which was a little disappointing as we had wanted our starter in advance of our meal. At this point, the server who brought our food asked if we needed anything else. Neither of us had silverware and we pointed this out, and I asked for a refill. The server said he would get some for us. He walked away, and apparently informed Ethan, who came back and refilled my tea, and had one set of silverware. He left again and came back with another set. And promptly zipped away again.

About 2 seconds after he had left, I noticed my food looked off. In the description of the dish, they had listed avocado and corn cake, and there was nothing like that on my plate. I wasn't sure if this was even my order at this point. My husband started digging in to his meal, while I tried to flag down Ethan again. He was zipping around other tables and even though I waved multiple times and tried to make eye contact, we were waiting about 10-15 minutes. During this time, my husband got increasingly upset and towards the end he just stopped eating because the situation was making him upset and he wasn't enjoying his food, even if it was delicious.

At last, we managed to flag someone down, a coworker of Ethan's. I showed her my plate and she agreed that it did not look like the proper order. She could tell we'd been waiting awhile, and encouraged me to start eating if I was hungry, and she'd get the proper order out soon.

By this point, the food was cold, but the flavors were delicious. Within 5 minutes, she was back out with the proper order and apologized. She seemed very capable and competent.

We enjoyed the rest of our food, and then tried to flag Ethan down for our check again. Again, our drinks were empty. With some waving, we got his attention and asked for refills and the check. He zipped away before we were truly finished with our sentence - we had wanted a to-go box as well.

All in all, the food was incredible. Everything was very well seasoned, bursting with flavor, and there was a very satisfying depth and complexity of flavor. The service from our server was bad. While Ethan was very friendly and cordial when we had his attention, the attention was truly lacking. It truly felt like we were stranded and just trying to use smoke signals to communicate an SOS. The atmosphere was okay. As I mentioned, it was very busy, and I usually consider that a good sign in a restaurant. What's weird is that there were multiple points in our evening meal that we tried to get anybody's attention, not just Ethan's, and it failed. We were waving, making eye contact, and just felt completely ignored. The lack of teamwork is weird. I understand being a server is a hard job. And I understand that they were busy. It looks like they have a lot of tables, and stretch their servers too thin. While they may have seating room available, they don't truly have the staff to make the dining...

My 1 star review is due to poor wedding catering execution by Blue Mesa. Which resulted in us not receiving the services listed in our contract and the wedding looking cheap. I would not recommend using Blue Mesa for a wedding or any special event. Their catering services align more with an office or casual party.

Cons:

1. The correct amount of food was not provided (miss calculation on required food). a) We contracted Blue Mesa to serve 90 guests but only 67 guests attended. Around guest 30 was when some of the food items began to run out (note: at this point, this was the 1st time half of our guests were going through the buffet line). Several guests never experienced our full menu. Also, if our 90 guests would have attended we would have completely run out of food.

2. For the food that did not run out, they did not properly replenish the buffet. a) When the second half of my guests were called to the buffet line there were several empty pans.

3. They did not provide all food items per our contract a) cocktail rolls were not provided for the beef tenderloin carving station

4. Only bloody rare tenderloin was available at the carving station. a) I would have expected multiple levels of doneness options available for the guests,

5)Unable to recreate delicious meals in large quantities. a) The chicken piccata was the worst and I would not recommend it for a large event. During the tasting we enjoyed this entree but during the wedding it was disgusting.

6. Their catering advertisement pictures show their Waitstaff in black dress shirts. However, they wore t-shirts or golf shirts with the Blue Mesa log on them.

7. Waitstaff did not serve/walk around the entire cocktail hour and the amount of appetizers contracted were not provided. a) The bride and groom's family arrived at cocktail hour ~15 min after it started due to them taking pictures. When they arrived none of the waitstaff were passing out appetizers and there were limited remaining apps. Again another miss planning/calculation on the amount of food required.

Pros:

1. Tasting: The tasting was amazing. We were able to try every item we were considering for the wedding. In addition, the food tasted great.
2. The catering/event manager was wonderful to work with before the wedding. She was attentive and willing to adjust our menu as needed to accommodate our needs. She even provided 1 vegetarian meal to accommodate a friend. However, after the wedding she never replied to our email highlighting a few of the...

I used to frequent Blue Mesa Grill when I worked across the street from the Plano location 10-20 years ago- either for lunch breaks or date night. I also loved the old Addision for the live music on weekends. Over the last 10 years, this restaurant started going downhill - in cleanliness and just started feeling "cheap." However, their smoked chicken enchiladas with all the fresh toppings on it, corn masa (which I make their recipe at home) and Adobe pie and sweet potato chips kept us coming back. The first picture is what it used to be -colorful, fresh, absolutely delicious-cotija cheese and slaw with red peppers, cabbage, carrots, cilantro and thinly sliced jicama. the 2nd picture is more of what it looked like the last time I ordered, except it didn't even have the pico on top. Literally was just enchiladas with some sauce on top. I had to ask for some sort of cabbage slaw for on top and the server had no idea what I was talking about, so they brought me out some some shredded cabbage (I had to show her a picture of what it used to look like the year before). There was barely any chicken in it and didn't taste smoky. No more guac or serrano which were kind of signature for BM for a LONG time and really added to plate presentation. The last few times I've attempted to go back over the past 3 years, it's been lackluster. We used to go in monthly for the chilehead rewards all those years ago, now they're no more (except for birthdays). I just dined at the FW location last month and got the grilled meat skewers- they were good, and I was excited to get mesa panna bread again because I remember how much I loved it in the past. Was really disappointed that it was now served with a dry, whole wheat thin pita bread that tasted like nothing. No pickled jalepeno/carrots. The crab enchilada was not like I remembered it, either. Flavor was terrible. The sweet potato chips were different- really thick and hard to chew. Salsa is still delicious (love both kinds) and the grilled shrimp and sausage were great. I'm so conflicted writing this review as I want this restaurant to survive, but since covid, it just hasn't been the same freshness and creativity of what I used to love so much, that I used to replicate in my cooking at home (the corn masa, pickled carrots/jalepenos and the slaw topping). If BM gets back to the freshness and basics of what made them so popular in my opinion, we'll...