El Zocalo Mexican Restaurant - Sanford — Restaurant in Sanford

I hate to write this review for a restaurant I actually enjoyed many times before. But after my take out delivery and spending nearly 100 dollars with having such a bad experience I figure I have to at least write about it. On Sunday the 16th my wife and I ordered take out at Zocalo for 3 dishes of food and two dips with chips each. I had a hard time with the man taking the order as I was reading directly off the menu the items we wanted but he kept saying a different order item from the one I mentioned making it seem as if I was getting something else. Anyway we get to the restaurant and my wife goes out the car because she cannot believe the order amounted to nearly 100 dollars from just 5 items. After she returned to me she claimed Zocalo's added a double tip gratuity for the order for a PICKUP! Why charge double gratuity for service when all we did was pickup? She demanded them to take that off but they only took off 6 dollars. Anyway that wasn't the half of it, upon inspecting my food, everything was charred and burned through. Well done is just well cooked but not burnt! I could smell how badly it was burnt as soon as I opened my package. Very disappointing as I have gone to Zocalo for at least a couple years now and haven't had this experience when ordering pickup or dining in. I don't know if management has changed or there has been a huge shakeup but the food quality and the gratuity automatically being charged for just a pickup order leaves much to be desired in the competitive food industry. It is very doubtful I will be back as my wife pretty much hates the place now. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to find anything like the flavor back home in southern California and Zocalos was the closest thing nearby that I have had. But service and food quality is an issue and I hope that they address it in the future. Thanks for...

The discrimination I received at this place was actually INSANE. Me and my friends went to go to their nightclub and the staff told me I couldn’t get in because I was wearing shorts. Mind you I was wearing jean shorts that were below knee length. Their dress code sign said no “sport shorts” which I made them aware. Their bouncer said “those are the rules” I said whatever then walked off to another bar. As we are walking by again later on they are letting in a man with sport shorts…which that’s what really infuriated me and my friends. So I confront the staff working the door and said “why can he go in and not me?” He was visibly breaking dress code and I was not. Their bald bouncer beings to yell and get defensive stating he was allowed in because allegedly he ate at the restaurant early in the day and was a paying customer…weirdest excuse I’ve ever heard but ok. Which I argued back that he was just making excuse and didn’t want to let me in for a personal reason (possibly homophobia) but who knows. They let me and my friends in because they were guilty idk. But I was curious to find the other guy in shorts to ask him a question. As I get in I’m approached by the guy in shorts and he greets me saying “they let you in, nice.” And out of I asked him if he ate there earlier at the restaurant and if that’s why he was allowed in…and his response to no surprise was “no this is my first time here.” Which really upset me so we eventually leave to go somewhere we actually were welcomed at. This place needs to either get better staff who aren’t going to discriminate towards paying potential clients and make people feel belittled and come up with...

Server ignored us for 45 minutes after he brought us our initial drinks, although he also forgot the water we specifically asked for as well.

We were sat outside before it started raining, and our server was nowhere to be found. We moved ourselves inside and finished our drinks while other tables, who came in after us, had drinks brought out and food orders taken. Meanwhile we spotted our server sitting at the bar d*cking around on his phone. We finished the chips and salsa some poor busboy brought out.

We were considering just leaving before I sat up and looked around for him, making eye contact. He finally came over and said "Sorry, it's been busy", even though we saw him on his phone and other servers on top of their game around us with bigger parties than 2 people (lol), and asked how we were feeling. At that point we were done with the place and decided to leave, letting him know we were this close to leaving. He replied "Good thing you didn't." Why? You have no idea who we were, didn't ID either of us for drinks, had no idea we were even there until I glared at him across the room lol what a joke. Happily tapped no tip after he swiped my card and left. Throwbacks right next door had better service and it's a dive bar that serves pizza lmao

2 stars because the drink was a good portion and was tasty, and I'm sure the food is probably good but we never got to experience it because the...