The Smoked Taco — Restaurant in Pleasant Grove

FINAL EDIT: The owner reached out by phone concerning our experience below and was very kind. We have since gone back and had a great experience, similar to what we had experienced at other locations many times prior. We love Smoked Taco!

We have been so excited for this location to open! Tonight we saw that it looked busy, so I stopped in to make a large dinner order. While I cannot comment yet on the quality of the food, I can comment on the customer service I received. Apparently it is not officially open yet, but it was some sort of VIP event tonight. I walked in and saw a small group of employees gathered in front of where I would order. Confused, I asked if they were open. One of the men very rudely told me it was a VIP night. Embarrassed, I apologized. He didn’t say anything else but just glared at me as I left. A simple, “Oh, no worries! We officially open [INSERT DATE]” would have been nice but instead I was left embarrassed and without any useful information about when to return. If we return when they are officially open to the public (whenever that may be), I sure hope we are treated better than I was tonight!

UPDATE BELOW

I emailed them, as they asked me publicly to do in their reply below to the original review. I did not receive a response until I emailed them again 10 days later. Long story short - They had no idea why I was emailing them. Here is our correspondence:

ME: 3/8/2024: Hello! Thank you for your response to my review. I am doing as you asked and reaching out.

ME: 3/18/2024: I reached out below as you publicly asked me to do and I have yet to hear anything back.

SMOKED TACO: 3/18/2024: Thank you for reaching out. I would love to hear a little bit about your negative experience so we can improve and make it right. Can you give some details of your visit? Thank you!

ME: 3/18/2024: Um… Did you not read my review? I was very detailed about what happened during my visit. You responded to the review and told me to contact you at this address so you could make it right. It seems though that the person who responded to this email must not be the same person who already replied under my Google review or you would have already known and understood the situation.

SMOKED TACO: 3/19/2024: I'm so sorry for the confusion. I am the one who responded to the review and I apologize for any misunderstanding. We have several different locations and a lot of reviews that we respond to, so I can't always remember the details of each bad experience. I went back to try and find the review and I was having a hard time locating it. If you could provide a short description of what went wrong or even copy and paste your google review in this email thread, I would appreciate it so much as it will help us to improve. We want our customers to have a quality experience and hearing that you didn't have a quality time disappoints us and we want to make it right! I emailed over a gift card that you can use at any location. We hope you can give us another try...

We weren't super hungry but stopped in on a recommendation. We got here at 12:20 on a Thursday. The parking was crazy, we ended up parking on the street 1/2 a block away. To be fair though there are 3 or 4 other food places right next to each other in this strip mall. We got right in to order. We ordered 1 Bang Bang taco and grabbed a Fanta to go with it. The guy taking our order said it may be a wait but I didn't think the wait would be too long as there weren't a lot of people in the building. I should have taken a cue from the amount of them that were just standing there looking at their phones without food in their hands. He wasn't wrong about our wait. We were there for 30 minutes waiting on one taco. While waiting I found out why we (in the store) had to wait. There were so many people coming in to get food from online/phone in/food delivery. I saw several of these orders with 3 and 4 BAGS full of food. When we finally got our 1 taco we went back to our car to eat. The taco itself was very flavorful. My wife liked it as it came with guacamole and pico de gallo. I was disapponted as I don't like quacamole and Pico should have a few tomatoes. This looked like nothing but onions (which don't agree with me). There was also NO cilatro or other "salad" to go on these. As for the price, I would say they are on the pricey side for tacos. Our 1 taco and a Fanta was $10. One thing that looked really good were the churro fries. We may go again to try others but on Tuesday when prices are...

The atmosphere is great. The staff is very friendly and helpful. The food was very good. I knew I wanted something with bacon so I got the BLT taco and it was amazing. It was full of flavor and the bacon had a rich smokey flavor. 10/10 would recommend the BLT taco. I also asked the employee what his favorite was and I got one of those as well. He recommend The Fleeing Californian. It was good but not my favorite. The meat was great but I didn't love having corn in it, some people might like it in there. I would give it a 6.5/10 it wasn't bad. I also got the chips and salsa. The chips are very good but I didn't love the salsa. The salsa was a little too sweet for my liking. It has a sweet mango flavor to it but dont let that fool you because it still has a kick. 4.5/10 for the salsa. On the spice level 1 being mild and 10 being verry hot ill rate the different dishes. I prefer a good medium heat (5) while still maintaining good flavor. The BLT Taco (5) The Fleeing Californian (3) Chips and salsa (5.5)

I hope this is helpful I do recommend this place. You will spend...