El Tejaban Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Richfield

Over the past several months, El Tejaban has been changing their recipes and menu. El Tejaban has been my family's go-to Mexican restaurant for more than a decade -- we've been going so long, we remember their old location on the other side of Nicollet.

The restaurant has changed from one of my top recommendations to mediocre at best. We will likely give them 1-2 more chances in the coming months. If things don't improve, we will start our search for a new Mexican restaurant.

The reason we started coming all those years ago was the molcajete de carnes. It was a delicious and dark sauce with wonderful spiciness. Lately, it is a much lighter color and flavor sauce -- it almost tastes like Indian food instead of Mexican! The cheese used to be a nice non-melting cotija, but now it is generic gooey cheese. They no longer provide cilantro without asking, and are stingy with the limes. They changed from nice sticks of chorizo to a small amount of finely chopped up chorizo.

Lately, they have killed their delicious complimentary chips and salsa. They used to be amazing fresh chips and they now taste like off-the-shelf chips. The salsas used to taste amazing and fresh, but have lately been altered to be much less good. The tomato salsa is now smooth instead of having nice chunks and fresh cilantro taste. The orange salsa is now bland and dull tasting, and much too mild in the spice department.

The torta cubana has also suffered. They've significantly reduced the ingredients and...

The entire experience was odd at this restaurant. There was a 10-15 minute wait time to be seated which was fine and not out of the ordinary but there wasn't really a hostess coordinating the customers coming in. She just announced to the room that was a was a table for 2-3 people available and would take a group the responded to their table so I am unsure if people got skipped.

There was close to a 10-15 min wait at the table for the server to acknowledge us so we could place our order. Ended up getting some chips and salsa for an appetizer and three tacos with carne asada, carnitas, and ground beef and my friend got the birria burrito. Tacos were ok but felt like it could have used something more than just the meat, cilantro and onions. I also realized after ordering I was never asked what type of salsa to go along with it but ended up using the salsa left over from the chip. My friends birria burrito she had stated she loved the taste but got a few pieces of cartilage or bone inside the burrito.

The final part that made eating here a bit uncomfortable was they were having people place their take out orders at the bar which resulted in them lining up between the tables where we were seated. So while were were eating we would just have slow moving line of people...

2024-November Yeah, not sure what has happened to this place. Used to be our go-to in the area. They have revamped their menu, removed complementary chips & salsa, and have changed the recipes on multiple staple items. There are several dishes that are noticeably downgraded in quantity and value.

It's also hard to not miss even little things like the lack of lime slices everywhere. (Dude, limes are like 50 cents each still for a full lime, c'mon)

I don't want to completely trash this place. I still will probably go back but just not frequently now. The quality, value, and offerings have all been trimmed back dramatically.

Maybe they had to do it to stay in business? Older Reviews below... Old Review We've had quite a few good experiences here. The food is reasonably priced, tastes good, and they are able to handle a lot of people.

The only slight suggestion I would give would be to the servers/owners. The servers tend to leave their tables for a long time. I an unsure how many tables they have to look over but it can be a little bit of a wait to get a drink/check.

I would...