On The Border Mexican Grill & Cantina — Restaurant in San Diego

This On the Border has been a favorite go to spot for some time. It's located blocks from our condo and the food and service are generally good...

On New Year's Eve we made the unfortunate decision to have dinner here before going home to bring in the New Year. It's been a tradition of ours to eat here on various holidays.

When we arrived there weren't many people there. We were shown to our table and our server came by to take our drink order. She was wonderful start to finish so I want to be clear that our negative experience had nothing to do with her. In fact because of her wonderful demeanor and perfect service our evening wasn't completely ruined. Almost immediately after taking our drink order she apologetically informed us they would be closing an hour early but assured us we'd have time to eat so we decided to stay.

On to what's beyond this location's control. We almost always order the enchiladas or something off of what used to be an extensive vegetarian and vegan menu. We decided to order the enchiladas and a fajita bowl. When the order came we noticed they now put a meat sauce on the enchiladas. We called our server over and she informed us they had just recently changed the menu and offered to replace them with enchiladas with sour cream sauce as we'd shared we were vegetarian. When they arrived they were quite good! Evening saved. Or so we thought.

We were about 3/4 the way through our dinner and they started turning the lights off. In fact they left another table of people in complete darkness. Our server looked so surprised when this happened and told whomever turned them off there were people there. They turned them right back on but the damage was done. The people quickly walked out. Then another gentleman that worked there came to our table as they were leaving and rudely told us we needed to wrap it up. We had $100 dinner tab and were shocked they treated us this way. We paid our bill and left, we'll never set foot in this restaurant or any other On the Border. The company clearly can care less about...

Sometimes you're in the mood for the type of Mexican food that's served with healing helpings of Spanish rice and refried beans.

They have a dog friendly patio with plenty of seating and heaters, but part of the reason they're only getting 4 stars is the patio stayed kinda dirty the whole time we were there. Near where we sat was clean, but we had to carry our dogs out to keep them from eating all the junk off the floors. The other reason I'm dinging them is the service was a bit lackluster. They forgot to bring the tortillas for my wife's fajitas, and she had to go inside and find someone, even though we told the person who brought the food. It wasn't a big deal, just the whole dinner it didn't feel like we were checked on that often.

With the bad parts out of the way, like I said sometimes you're in the mood for the type of Mexican food that is ubiquitous across the country, the type served on bright colored plates with heaping helpings of rice and beans. Who cares if it's authentic or not, because it's really tasty regardless. My wife got fajitas, solid as always. I got the Superior Dinner, which is like a sample platter of entrees. My favorite thing on there was the mini chimichanga, if I could order a whole plate of just those I would. You get unlimited chips and salsa as well, which feels like more of a rarity these days.

They have a wide selection of margaritas, we both liked ours. The barrel aged rita was actually quite a bit, they gave me a small glass and the shaker and I got I think 3 refills out of it, so it felt like a good bang for my buck.

We will definitely come here again, but only when the weather is warm. It felt kind of dreary on the patio in the dead of winter. San Diego has so many varieties of Mexican food, and this lands solidly on the "rice and beans" list. Our bill was pretty low, even with drinks, so we will certainly give them another chance once the weather warms up and we aren't the only ones...

Mexican food is my all time favorite. I consider myself to be a Mexican food connoisseur and grew up eating Tex Mex. I have eaten at 100's of Mexican restaurants in my lifetime. I used to love "On The Border" at the original locations in Texas in the early 1980's. Over the years the quality got worse and worse. I am visiting San Diego this week from Texas and was hankering for good Mexican food. I remembered On the Border was not what it used to be but figured their chips and salsa would still be good enough to satisfy my cravings since good Mexican food is hard to find in California. I ordered enchilada suizas, which is on the top of my favorite list. When it arrived it looked unappetizing but I planned to eat it anyway. I took one bite and wanted to spit it out immediatly. That was the WORST tasting sauce and everything else I have ever tasted. The only word I could think of to discribe the flavor was something I heard in a Harry Potter movie "vomit flavor". I can honestly say out of the 1000's of chicken enchiladas I have eaten in my life..... that won the "grossest ever" award. And it won by a landslide....No others even came close. I wouldn't feed that to a dog. Come on On the Border.... rediculous to serve that for human consumption. You can do way better. If you don't fix your menu....you will not stay in business much longer. And if you are a Californinan and think that On The Border is good, I feel sorry for you because you have no clue what good Mexican food is. Go visit Texas and get yourself some Tex/Mex and find out what you...