El Rodeo — Restaurant in Silver Spring Township

Great food, horrible server. I have eaten at El Rodeo restaurants in other cities, and the food at this one was of comparable quality. It is standard American-style Tex-Mex. It was served hot and came out quickly. However, we had the worst server that I can remember having at a restaurant in a long, long time. We (a quiet group of two) arrived after the lunch rush had ended and had to wait a couple of minutes for somebody to come seat us. When the woman saw us, she literally sighed and looked annoyed that we were there. She was not friendly as she asked how many we were and took us to our table. Unfortunately, that same woman was also our waitress. She eventually came and gave us our drinks and took our order. She brought us our appetizer a few minutes later, putting it on the table and then walking away as we tried to speak to her about the appetizer she brought. She never returned to our table--in fact, we tried to get her attention several times throughout our meal and got the impression she was actually avoiding us. A friendly man from the kitchen brought out our food a bit later and offered to take the uneaten appetizer off the bill. The waitress never came back to see how our food was or to refill our waters. A different (also friendly) woman bused our table as we ate, and eventually we had to grab the same bus woman to ask for our check because our waitress would walk right by our table without acknowledging us. Nobody ever brought us a check, so we went to the cash register and the woman who bused our table rang us up. It was terrible and left us really frustrated. I think it was probably just an isolated issue, because the friend I went with has eaten there often and always had great service. I would probably go to one of the other El Rodeos in the area instead...

I really enjoy this restaurant for not only the food and low prices, but the authentic cozy vibe and the nice service. A few friends and myself go once every other week for dinner and drinks. The drink prices are completely reasonable and the staff are quick to check in on us. I have never had a bad experience, the food is great and I have never had my order arrive wrong. *Personally, the person 3 comments down that complained about their entire experience didn't make any sense to me. To say that you 'enjoy authenticity' but didn't like that your server's primary language wasn't English (and was Spanish), is like an oxymoron in itself. It is a Mexican restaurant, with food made by nice men and women of Spanish descent. Otherwise, really, where is the authenticity? I don't think she considered that her friends did not do a good job attempting to speak Spanish or attempt to do as they had done by 'pointing at the name (or picture) in the menu. The servers have always been very kind while we attempt to order our food with appropriate pronunciation, often failing miserably. We have still never received an incorrect order. Lastly, who orders a taco salad, without the taco?? Great place! Check it out! If you don't actually like authentic Mexican food, or can't work through minor communication barriers, then perhaps it...

We went early for dinner so parking wasn't a problem. The place was clean and had lots of decorations to put out a Mexican vibe. If Google had half stars, I would give this place two and a half stars, not two. It wasn't BAD, but there wasn't anything in our experience that would make us decide to return since there are other options in the general area.

The service wasn't great - we took a while to decide what we wanted, but once we did we had to get up to find our waitress. The sides we're good, and the entrees were reasonably priced for the portions served. The reason for the neutral review was the beef dishes (our group was mainly eating beef dishes), that had NO seasoning/spices in the taco meat, the beef tips, or the enchilada filling. It wasn't bad, it just didn't have the flavor that we expected at what is billed as a Mexican restaurant.

The other reason for the two stars was that we had to hunt for our waitress again when we wanted our bill, and we weren't told that we should pay up at the register, so we did sit for a while before we had to get up from the table a third time, albiet to pay the bill on...