El Maguey Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Salem

This past Saturday 5/14 late afternoon entering the restaurant with a baseball team waiting to be seated. I tried to put our name in several times to be put on a list if they were taking names. The manager/maybe owner took his hands to wave me on (like dismissing me or language barrier) several times, ugh. A waitress that I witnessed several times try to take care of every table on her own, noticed us and apologized then seated us. 20min later finally the same waitress noticed we haven't been waited on yet. During this time waiting I noticed again the owner or manager yelling at this waitress that she needed to pay for several people's drinks/food from people leaving while waiting on their food. People were tired of waiting on service and food so bailed. This is not the waitress's fault. Yes, it crossed our minds to leave too but I was worried for this waitress. All restaurants have a bad day and the way the world is right now being short-staffed is everywhere. We need to have more patience but last year we had perfect food and service in the outside seating on the roof. With a whole baseball team coming into the restaurant I believe they panicked. Everything was concentrated on that. Then I noticed this baseball team haven't received their drinks nor food 40min in. I know the food is good here and came a long way away to eat here. Our food was cold when we received it but didn't complain to our waitress or the food runner we saw starting to help. Our Biggest complaint here is to keep your great staff that you have on hand and don't yell at them or tell them they have to pay for food/drinks when customers decided to leave from waiting too long. Microwave worked great to heat it back up at home. After reading the other reviews it is not the owner that was rude to us maybe management staff. Who knows! I appreciate reading the owner replying to most of the reviews that Raquel gives generic replys with no true resolution to the customer's problem. We paid way too much for quality of food and no waiter/waitress needs to be treated like that. Maybe when things are going so bad. It wouldn't hurt to shut the doors and call it...

Came here 3/4/23 for dinner. Place was only about half full at 8 pm. Ordered food, and ate on our chips and queso. 35 min later server came to table to inform us they were out of one of our entrees. So had to change. Owner came to table after another 10 min to say would give 20% off entree. Told her did not think that was acceptable at which point she blamed problem on server being new. Girlfriend told her that she wanted rice and beans with her meal as well as the guacamole the menu said would come with her meal. She came back and dropped off, literally dropped on table, rice and beans. 10 min later food arrived. So much seasoning had to have sour cream to tone down enough to eat. Check is presented with announcement they have given us 9.99 off our bill. Keep in mind the entree they were out of, and the replacement were 14 dollars. I look at the bill and they had tacked on another 14 dollars for rice, beans and guacamole. Tried to talk to owner and she walked away. Followed her and she finally decided to talk back at front. Told me plainly I gave you 10 off you owe me the rest. Said I was not gonna pay for the extras she charged for. She essentially put everything back on she took off plus some. She got mad and said fine don't pay anything and never come back. I told her this was the 4th time in a year we had problems there and were giving the. A chance to make things right. This place has steadily gone downhill since started coming here. If the owners attitude has anything to do with it, she laughed in our faces more than once, it's no surprise. Recommend finding a...

Good food, service ok. Huge drinks. Well worth going to. My favorite Mexican restaurant in town. Update 5/1/22 Went for dinner tonight. The food is much better, fresh produce, excellent food. Went to 5 stars. The 3 of us ordered 4 types of taco meal. All were fantastic. The waitress was attentive, helpful, and very nice. The only thing we didn't like were the way the tamales were fixed. Odd having the food on top and not wrapped inside. The food on top the tamales were very good though. Thanks for a great meal! Update: Sunday, 3/5/23... An error with dinner. Food was great! It would of been a much nicer meal with my family if the unbelievable loud mouth guests had some manners and didn't spend their time cussing at each other, laughing so loud we couldn't hear each other speak, and complaining to each other about the food. Our poor waiter was so stressed out. They had to keep raising the music which became incredibly loud for a while. These people have zero clue how to behave in public. I suspect multiple of them were drunk because I can't imagine anyone being sober and being so obnoxious. We could barely speak to each other at our table. The waiter got my meal wrong because he couldn't hear over the other people's big mouths. The establishment should of asked them to leave for the sake of all their other guests. This was around 5-6 p.m. Sunday evening. If they wanted to be so raucous and disrespectful to everyone there, they should of gone to just a bar and...