Taqueria Y Antojitos El Chido W Broad St — Restaurant in Richmond

THE WORST EXPERIENCE.

TL/DR: This is a self-service eatery that presents itself as a traditional dine-in restaurant. The customer seats themselves, serves themselves, and clears their own table. The service and experience is terrible, and the prices are high. You pay for your food up front, and tip BEFORE your food is prepared and any service is rendered.

The problem is, if it's your first time here, you don't know that.

You enter the restaurant, pass by the cashier, take your own menu, and seat yourself at a table. Then when you decide what you want to eat, you go up to the cashier/server and order your food. You prepay for your food, and you also PRE-TIP for service. Then when you are done, you clear your own table and put your plates next to a trash receptacle. The service you receive SOLELY consists of bringing your food to your table. It starts and ends there.

The problem is, if this is a self-service restaurant, there is no point in tipping for service. The credit card machine suggests a 20% tip. If you receive terrible service and had a terrible experience like I did, you just tipped for nothing and were scammed.

My wife and I ate dinner at this location the night of Tuesday, March 25, 2025.

We paid for our food and drinks up front, we included tip. My wife ordered the special for $19, and I ordered the Carne Asada for $15. After we sat back down, the cashier/server walked up and apologized that they ran out of the Special and ran out of Carne Asada.

This was a problem because we had already paid for our meal. Instead of refunding our money and reordering, the cashier/server asked us to order something else. Her English was not very good, and that's ok. That said, she forcefully suggested entrees that cost less than what we had already paid for. This created a very awkward moment. We were being taken advantage of.

We remade our order. My meal came out pretty quick. My wife's plate came out about 25 mins from when we re-ordered. I was done eating, and her food had yet to arrive.

For dine-in restaurants, tip is a reward for EXCEPTIONAL service rendered by the server. Tip incentivizes servers to go above and beyond by giving exceptional service.

Tip is NOT compulsory at the point of sale before products and services are rendered. In this way, the practice of tipping is abused. This seems to be the direction many contemporary establishments are headed in modern society.

The picture I attached is what I paid $15 for. You be the judge of whether or not it's worth $15. My wife and I lived in Arizona and have been to Texas many times. We LOVE the South-West. We LOVE Latino culture. I'm used to Mexican Restaurants giving GREAT service and GREAT food that is a VALUE to the customer. My experience at Taqueria Y Antojitos EL CHIDO is FAR below the standard of the many Mexican food establishments I have frequented in the South-West.

If you read many of EL-CHIDO's 1 star Google and Yelp reviews, they are in Spanish. Using the AI translate feature, many of their experiences echo the very same sentiment of my review. It's wise to heed their warnings.

Providing bad service, bad experience, while charging high prices is just how this establishment rolls.

I'm writing this review so that you don't have to go through what we, and many other El Chido customers have experienced.

I have no idea how El Chido has such high Google review ratings. Just goes to show you can't fully trust Google reviews.

In my experience, a handful of well-written one star reviews are worth much more than hundreds of short 5 star reviews.

We are never coming back here again. It was such a bad experience. This is the EXACT reason why customers should NEVER prepay for their food, and NEVER prepay for tip for a dining-in experience. You're just going to be taken advantage of.

It's apparent to me that the Owners and the Leadership of this restaurant are terrible.

DON'T GO HERE! There are literally hundreds of other Mexican restaurants that are better. Pretty much any other...

My Partner & I just placed a Walk-In Pickup order at "Taqueria Y Antojitos El Chido W Broad St". While trying to order our meal, the wait staff seemed too pre-occupied to help us and when we finally got a chance to order, we were treating like we were incompetent. After finally getting our order placed, we sat down to wait for the food to be prepared. While we sat, 3 members of staff stood to the corner, chatting and making glances at my girlfriend & I making us uneasy and uncomfortable. Finally, when the food was prepared, a man brought over the order to the table we were seated at. I tried to say "thank you" to the man and he met me with a stare down, reluctantly giving me the bag of food. All in all, the service was terrible and their seemed to be an inside joke of some sort that we were not privy too... Now, with my food in hand, I rush outside, excited to eat. I get in the car and rush home. Only to find out that my order is entirely messed up! I ordered 4 tacos without cabbage and received 3 tacos with cabbage. The tacos were made using what seemed to be pieces of spare left-over tortillas. I ordered extra hot sauce and received half the standard amount. No green hot sauce at all. & we ordered Queso, Guacamole, & Chips and received a very small portion of chips. Not enough chips to eat the $13 worth of guacamole and queso we ordered. Of course at this point we are livid and let down. We were excited to get some authentic fresh made food, our first meal of the day even and it was ruined. So we called the store and spoke to a women. Immediately she started talking in Spanish to her coworkers saying "haha its the Americans haha" it was appalling. We already felt like we were treated poorly from the start but now it's confirmed that they treated us poorly due to our nationality or skin tone. Absolutely unacceptable. You could hear the entire restaurant in the background laughing, thinking this was all a big joke. We were simply calling to see if we could get the 4th taco we paid for but everyone was to busy laughing at us to help us... This was a very unpleasant experience, this location was a go-to taco place for my girlfriend and I but we do not feel comfortable giving them our business any longer. We don't even feel comfortable eating the food that was served to us in the chance that it was tampered with. You don't mess with people's food; that's...

I've been to Mexico 3 times, when I lived in California. This place is more like genuine Mexican than anywhere north of San Diego, that I had in California.

I've now been to El Chido twice - and I will be going back many times. Several previous reviews claim this is the best in Richmond - and I'm not going to argue with that claim.

My first visit, I got the Chicken and Chorizo special, as takeaway. It was 2 huge slices of chicken, marinated in wonderful Mexican spices, covering a mountain of chorizo and veggies, crammed into a standard foam plastic carryout dish. I am a hearty eater - and the chicken, chorizo, rice, and beans was enough for 2 good meals.

My second visit, I got Caldo do Camaron (Mexican shrimp soup), and the house special burrito dish. This time, I ate in the restaurant. The camaron was 8 (I think, didn't count them) fresh shrimp, in a quart bowl of broth, veggies, etc. The shrimp are huge and whole - and obviously had been nowhere near a freezer. As good as anything I ate in Cancun or Matzalan.

El Chido moved there maybe a month ago - and in doing so, greatly improved that section of Broad Street. I am lucky enough to live within 10 minutes walking distance. I'll be going back there as often as possible.

Delivery, dine in, or takeaway - I'm going to enjoy living here, with El...