Agave Cocina & Cantina — Restaurant in Redmond

Comfortable, unassuming family restaurant in the Safeway plaza. Great chips and salsa.

Today was our second time in and had a weird experience. At the beginning, we verified with the server that today was Tequila Tuesday (TT) and that tequila was half off. He said just for shots though, not margaritas. Two of us ordered margaritas anyway — they were very sweet, not sour, and pretty weak. So the guys decided to take advantage of TT and ordered 2 shots, so they could pour it into their margs. Server asked which tequila, we said whatever the house one was, he hesitated, and we said “just whatever the cheapest one is” and he said okay.

He brought over 2 massive shot glasses, so we thought maybe he thought they were ordering 2 shots each, but we thought no big deal. Later we get the check and see that he charged $21.50 per shot.

We thought that was crazy for their cheapest tequila, but we should at least be getting the half off, so we told him, and he very nonchalantly said “oh I forgot to put on the discount”.

Instead of having a corrected bill, he came back with the tequila menu, and had the gall to tell us that we had ordered the house tequila, which is $43 per shot, so he had charged us correctly! He pointed at the “Clase Azul Reposado” in the middle of the page, with no indication on it that it should even kind of be confused as the “house” tequila.

We obviously objected because we never even looked at the menu and had clearly just asked him for their cheapest tequila. He said okay and after some time, he finally came back charging us $8.50 per shot. This was still wrong since that is the normal price and not the TT price, but by this point we just wanted to get home, so let it go.

The food is fine and the server we had last time was great, so not sure if we for sure won’t come back because of this experience, but it...

Had to find a decent Mexican place to eat near us so we tried Agave. Our favorite is Torero’s in Renton. Best margarita on the planet! But we moved out of that area and we’re trying to find something close. Our first mistake was trying it on Cinco de Mayo. It was crowded but we actually sat pretty quickly. The margarita special was okay. I’ve had much better. We had 2 drinks each. The first came out with one lime, the second, with 6! Maybe they were running out of alcohol and had to make up the space? We asked for waters 3 times but never saw it until I was done with my meal. As for the food, typically Mexican comes out pretty fast and extremely hot. Not here! Both our dishes came out barely warm. I found it odd that they carried them with oven mits but didn’t tell us to be careful. They were shocked when we told them it was cold. Attempt #2, mine was okay hot, my friends was actually cold! They were beyond shocked. 2 servers had to ask if we were sure it was cold! So after I completely finished my meal, her 3rd attempt finally came out. This time it was what we are used to, the plate practically glowing hot and the steam from the food hot enough to melt your eyeballs. Through the meal I tried to get more salsa. 3 tries on this one. Got it with barely a few bites left on my plate. After it all, no apologies, no acknowledgement, no discount, nothing. I had to ask and her excuse was they were extremely busy. It was Cinco de Mayo, but they were at HALF CAPACITY! And they should know better. It wasn’t just the service though. The food was mediocre. But it was the service. It WAS AWFUL! I had high hopes. Guess we’ll just have to keep looking. Or take a drive when we really...

I have been meaning to try this place out for a very long time and I finally did yesterday. I am upset that I didn’t go here earlier because their food is so $%&€^ good!! My boyfriend and I went right around 4pm ish on a Sunday and the inside wasn’t too busy and it was very relaxed. Every single person who worked there was so nice and they were very timely.

Their chips and salsa are great starters and they bring 2 types of salsa out and a bowl of pico too which was amazing. My boyfriend got carne adada and prawns (without mushrooms), and I got a chicken chimichanga with shredded chicken (I have not tried the chicken tinga there yet). Everything was cooked to perfection and the flavors were on point. Their rice and beans were also really good which I loved because a lot of restaurants just don’t care about those and can be quite bland. Not here though. They were delicious.

We also ordered an Agave Cadillac (alcoholic) drink to share and started with the smaller size because we had not had it before but it was so good I wished we had gotten the larger one. They also bring the alcohol out in a shot glass and you pour it and mix it in which I actually loved because there is no question about how much alcohol is in the drink. I unfortunately forgot to take a pic of the drink, but I took some of the food :)

All in all we really loved this place and it’s now going to be our go to place for Mexican food here in Redmond. It was exactly what we had wanted and nothing was disappointing. I also realized that it looks like they’ve got a patio on the back side of the building with shaded seating so I plan to go that route here...