Torchy's Tacos — Restaurant in Queen Creek

My girlfriend and I went to the Queen Creek (Ellsworth) location tonight, Taco Tuesday around 7PM, having recently moved to the area, with the opinions below being shared by the two of us. I'm more than a little surprised to see an average of 4.0 stars at the time of writing this.

Food: Between the two of us, we tried 5 tacos with the intent of sampling as much of what Torchy's has to offer as possible. The tacos were... not good. The "Tipsy Chick" was serviceable, as was the sauce it was served with. However, the two had no business being eaten together. The "Brushfire", too, was alright. The barbacoa on the "Democrat" was nearly flavorless, the "Republican" (served with a whole, uncut, sausage sitting within a tortilla) was unremarkable at best, and the "Chicken Fajita" was bland enough that we were sure the included vegetables had been stored frozen. Beyond all of that, none of the various salsas that Torchy's offers complemented any of the food served to us.

Service: The employees are young as someone called out in another review, and honestly good on Torchy's for employing local students and such. The girl working the front counter was welcoming and friendly, but that was not shared by other employees. We watched an employee walk out with someone's order and spend 2-3 minutes talking with two people, one wearing Torchy's shirt and the other not, before walking the order over to the waiting customer's table. When our order was brought out after about 15 minutes, we asked for a bag so we could take our food to go. The employee who brought the food out to us offered to bag it for it. Great! That was until we waited another 7 minutes for a different employee to walk out and hand us the bag. We live less than three miles away from the location, and the food was ice cold, and despite being wrapped in aluminum foil for who knows how long, none of the cheese was melted. On top of that the tortillas were sopping wet.

Atmosphere: Torchy's is designed, more or less, like a sports bar. Nothing wrong with that, but nothing unique about it either. TVs above the bar were playing a recent NFL game, and if I recall, two NHL games. So, while I wouldn't seek Torchy's to catch a game, no complaints here. There was a car show - not sure if it was suppose to be Classic Cars or something more general - directly in front of the restaurant. Honestly, pretty cool in my book, but want to point it out for those who might be in wheelchairs or something. You're going to have to park further away than you might think... but there are cool cars...

Update to yesterday: Been seeing this place slowly fall. I've been going to Torchys across america for years in fact when the very first one opened up in Austin and I've never had a single problem or been asked to show my ID. When my wife and I were asked by some young girl that didnt look a day over 11 yo,named Jordan yesterday, I thought to myself "get me the manager" as I am tattooed and gray bearded man in his mid 40s and have been frequenting this particular location since November when I moved back to AZ. No big deal though and we provided our ID. I mentioned something about it and said I've never been asked to provide my ID here. I said "you must be new" and she replied with "I'm definitely not new." Well she's new to bartending or has been in the back cooking food or something because I've never seen her and she looked quite unfamiliar with how to use the order software as she kept asking for help. Anyway, she said to me "It's the law" and then not even 5 minutes later a younger looking couple than my wife and myself sits down and she does not ID them when they asked for beverages. Roughly 5 minutes after that, another gentleman sits down and orders a drink that doesn't look any older than myself, and he does not get ID'd. We were planning on leaving her a cash tip as we always do when we go out to eat so the bartenders get their money instead of tip sharing. We asked her to break a 50 and she told us they dont break bills. Ok. Well, seeing as how I've never seen this girl before, she must be new, and we left it at that. I've seen this place slowly lose people, and every time I've gone in lately, the atmosphere is just no longer there. I won't be dealing with dumb little girl bartenders that can't make a proper drink, pick and choose who she bothers and who she doesn't and most certainly won't feel like I'm being talked down to by a small child anymore. Ff to the end of this, I had completely lost my appetite and just finished my drink and we left.Goodbye Torchys. It's been real. I lost my faith in...

I really wanted to like this place. I decided to give it a try and quickly wished I hadn’t. The place was packed and there was one bartender working the bar. The food took forever (one single taco) and it wasn’t great. I could’ve made it at home. The bartender was all over the place and very unprofessional. She told another customer that he’d better look at his check because she often rings stuff up wrong… now, when it came to my check. It was wrong. She forgot to ring me in at happy hour so I let her know. It took about 20 min to get a manager out to make the correction. She rang it up wrong again. Then I also noticed she had rang me up for a large cocktail rather than a small one. She pointed at the glass and said “that’s a large” to which I said I ordered a small and this is my first time here so how would I know the difference between the two. She took another 20 min (not exaggerating) to call out the manager again at which point the manager made the same comment about glass size as if it’s a customers job to know that. Once the check was corrected, it took another 15 min to get the paper back to sign and the bartender took the guys card who had come up to buy a beer during all this waiting. She took his card and ran it first, after he had been there maybe 10 min and I had been there easily 40 min. So unprofessional and terrible service! I will...