Taqueria Pancho Villa — Restaurant in San Mateo

Food was great. I loved it. The reason I couldn't give it higher score is because of the wait time. I walked in at 8:15 and got out by 9:00. I only ordered 1 meal to go and waited 40 minutes. This is too long for today's standard. I do support this restaurant and hope the owner would try to improve the operations processes. As an industrial engineer, I observed the work process during the 40 minutes wait. Here are some opportunities for improvement:

Do not let workers in the kitchen come out to serve customers. First, walking is a waste of time. Second, it took them even more time to find the table of customers who made the order. I saw the lady holding dishes yelling order number, having a hard time finding the right customers. This can be improved by simply having 1 designated waiter or, even better, let the customers come to the counter and get their own orders. Anyway, most importantly, kitchen workers must stay in the kitchen and dedicate all their time on preparing food!

Put the chips at the salsa bar and let customers serve themselves. Right now the cashier is serving chips to the customers, which slowed down the payment process.

Ice maker is too far away from the juice bar. The person who makes juice needs to hold his blender and travel quite a few steps to get ice, and back. Again, walking is pure waste of time and not adding any value to...

Best smoothie of my sons life. He had the number 1 that has bananas, strawberries, lime, OJ, and yogurt. Husband had chicken tacos, son had shrimp and steak burrito, I had cheese enchiladas and sister had chile relleno (pictured). No lard in the whole pinto beans so vegetarians can have them and they offer black beans as well. They mixed up part of our order so we got extra food and we weren't the only ones, at first it was annoying but then became charming after seeing the lady walking around with plates of food calling out numbers and names of food. They need better organization with bringing out the food, not all of our food came out at once but we ate the extra food that we didn't order while some of us waited for the food we did order. When we are back in town, we'll be coming back for more. The kitchen is open and you can watch them preparing the food and they all wear gloves. Husband's review: he's a meat eater and was impressed with the amount of chicken in his tacos as well as shrimp and steak in my sons burrito. They were impressed with the mounds of beef they saw being chopped and chicken being grilled. They have a Huge menu and my husband had visions of going there everyday for 2 weeks without...

The service here was very slow, ended up souring my experience.

When I had entered there were about four people waiting for their food and one person followed behind me. We waited for a few minutes at the counter and after having no one ask for our orders the person behind me left. When I did get help, it didn't take too long for it to be made at least. But, unfortunately, waiting at the register after ordering was another ordeal. The person behind the register was more focused on organzing salsas in the fridge than payment. A line ended up developing behind me as I continued trying to get his attention. And when I left, some of the people who were waiting on their food before I got there were still there, after the 20 minutes it took to get mine.

In the end, after all the waiting involved, I got my food and it was just okay. The al pastor wasn't that great and the churro not too special. The slower service wouldn't be an issue if the food was worth waiting for, but I ended up not even finishing it.

The okay burrito is probably only worth ☆☆☆ but the issues with even ordering it knocked this...