Old Town Tortilla Factory — Restaurant in Scottsdale

Last week I bought a deal on Living Social. It included an appetizer to share, two entrees, and a dessert to share. Oh, and four margaritas. It was a good deal, needless to say. We decided to redeem our voucher on a Friday night. I called to make a reservation, and was told they don't make reservations for parties less than 6, but to come in and they would seat us. No big deal. We got there a little after 8.

We asked for a table outside, sat down, and I ran to the restroom. By the time I got back, we still didn't have a server. We sat there for nearly 10 minutes before I was going to say something. Then, finally,our server came over. He was nice, and took our drink order. I told him about the Living Social, and all night he proved to know little about it. He even mentioned that this was his first one. That's fine, the voucher hadn't been out long... But if an establishment is going to run a deal like that, the entire staff needs to be aware of it before greeting tables. As you can see in other reviews here on Yelp and other networks, the voucher has been redeemed several times already.

We ordered our first round of margaritas. Sheryl asked for frozen. When he came back, hers was not frozen. Our server corrected the issue, but why would he bring a drink that was not what she ordered all the way from the bar? Then we ordered our enchiladas. We asked for both with no sour cream. When they arrived at the table, both had sour cream on top. You can see where I am going with this.

Once my entree hit the table, I asked if they had any hot sauce. "Yes, we have a nice habenero hot sauce." I asked for some... Never came to the table. It was literally one thing after another all night long. By the end of the night, I needed to inform a manager of our experience. I did, and she offered us a round of drinks. We had already consumed two margaritas each, and didn't want another one. Then she offered us a dessert. That was included in our voucher. Again, she was nice, and I didn't ask for anything... Just wanted her to be aware.

A few minutes later, the server grabbed our dishes to box up... We only ate about half. There was a lot of food! He then came back, and we asked for the check. He made a snide comment about the experience not being "up to standard," which it wasn't, and walked away. Why would the manager mention that to him while we were still in the restaurant?

We left happy with the food... But the experience was the worst I had seen at the Old Town Tortilla Factory. I remember the first time I visited the Tortilla Factory. Such great memories of sitting outside under the stars eating delicious authentic Mexican fare. I once would recommend people visit the Tortilla Factory, but with the recent experience we had, am not sure I can recommend it again. The food was awesome... Always is. But the service needs work. Hopefully the next item I go everything...

After a long day of dealing with some family drama while visiting Arizona, my sister and I thought it would be nice to take the edge off with a margarita and some good Mexican food. Old Town Tortilla Factory offers neither. Shaken and poured tableside, the syrupy and terribly weak cocktail they call a “Margarita” isn’t worth the cheap plastic shaker it comes in. Spare me the theater and serve me something that lives up to the name. Tortilla Factory? In this case, I think they have fulfilled the nomenclature. The tortilla chips are cold and industrial and taste like they were made in a factory. We’re talking Tostitos. And the salsa?! Basically sweet, bland Ragu type pasta sauce with a massive amount of cumin thrown in. In a city that prides itself on delicious and FREE chips and salsa, how can they serve this for $7? In some of the other reviews, I see people raving about some homemade flour tortillas with herb butter, but I don’t see those on the menu. Are those complimentary? Did they just forget to give us those? Guess so. Entrees were even more disappointing. Maybe they were lukewarm because they were served that way? Or maybe it was because it took us so long to flag somebody down for silverware? In the end, does it matter? We had the stinky mahi tacos and the red (cumin dominated) enchiladas. Both were served on dry, miserable and splitting corn tortillas and accompanied by crusty rice and sad and dusty black beans. Portions were fairly small compared to other restaurants in a similar price range in Scottsdale, but that was fine, since nothing about that food made us want to finish it. Most of the other tables were just groups of white golfer guys likely visiting from the mid-west, but even Cleveland or Detroit must have better Mexican or Southwestern food than this. I mean there's Chipotles everywhere, right? Even those dudes must have been disappointed. Back home in Mexico City, I can still feel the cumin and sweet and sour mix gurgling up in the back of my throat as I write this. I’m not a purist. I understand that Mexican food is interpreted through many lenses – Tex-Mex, Arizonan Sonoran, New Mexican. I have happily devoured a cheese crisp from Los Olivos and reveled in the green chile pork from Roaring Fork. But this food is a disgrace to whatever category it claims to belong to. As a lifelong restaurant employee and owner, I long ago swore I would never write a negative restaurant review. Too many people work too hard in this business and deal with enough problems every day. But this meal was an insult to both my palette and intelligence and deserves to...

When we arrived at the Tortilla Factory and were told that we would have to wait for a table on the patio (even though you could clearly see empty tables), we should have taken that as a sign of things to come and left. Instead, we gave them the benefit of the doubt and waited ten minutes to be seated. When we were, we were walked past several empty tables (surprising as they told us and everyone after us that there needed to be a wait), until we were seated at a table in the very back of the patio right under their "misting" system (misting in quotes as it was more like a sprinkler system). Not wanting to be rained upon throughout our whole meal, we moved to an empty table one over...our second biggest mistake of the night (the first being deciding upon this restaurant in the first place). Our waiter took forever to even bring us water, asked if I wanted a glass to go with my beer (which he never brought even though it was his suggestion), and then finally (after ten minutes), bothered to check to see if we wanted to order. We placed an order for chips and salsa (which apparently at Tortilla Factory are considered a $5 worthy appetizer order) and our dinner order (as we didn't want the opportunity to escape to place our order since our waiter had been so absentee). Twenty minutes later, with nothing brought to our table, and our waiter barely casting a glance in our direction, we waved him down and told him to forget our order. He appeared flabbergasted and couldn't understand why we were so upset. He asked if he could box up our food, to which we replied "What food? We've gotten nothing in the twenty minutes we've sat here!" Rather than apologizing and assuring us our food would be right out, he smugly remarked that "twenty minutes wasn't such a long wait time" and he walked away without another word. When we spoke to the manager as we left, her only offer to "make things right" was to have us wait in the bar so she could box up our food for us...what every diner wants on a Saturday night out with their boyfriend...a half cold dinner to enjoy out of a styrofoam container - how romantic! I can't even comment on the food as in the 35 minutes+ we were there, we never had an opportunity to even sample a bite! Horribly over-rated, hugely...