El Patron Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in South Carolina

Update (7/17)

They’ve redecorated and it looks great. We visited right after they reopened. The little blonde waitress waited on us. When we finally got our food, she stayed up front by the door on her mobile phone texting or web surfing for 20 mins while we were waiting on refills. I did not give her a good tip. In fact, we arranged all of our empty glasses around the ticket when we left so she would know why.

We went back a couple of weeks later and had a different waitress. She was wonderful (and well-tipped) but the little blonde girl was working and kept walking by giving me the evil eye :D

We went from probably your most frequent customers to non-customers now. Sorry…I don’t want anyone messing with our food.

ORIGINAL POST

Honestly, this is the best Mexican food we have found in the region. Not that it’s of the same quality as the Southwest, but it’s better than most of the others in the area by far. Their salsa bar is great as they have actual HOT salsas as an option.

The problem, as others have pointed out, is there service. We have been coming here for almost two years (at least a dozen times now) and have only had good service maybe twice. We always have to wait a long time (5-10 mins) to place our drink order, have received sweet tea refills when ordering unsweet on multiple occasions (even after pointing out that we received sweet we got sweet again on two separate visits), have had to go get our waiter to place our order, have had to wait forever for chip/drink refills, and have had to wait forever for the bill.

Not sure what the problem is, but fix the service and I will happily change the rating because we...

Absolutely HORRRIBLE experience! My husband and I decided to watch here last Saturday. We got there, ordered our drinks and shortly after, we ordered our food. We had a few questions about the menu and our waitress, Karla couldn't even answer questions we had. That was a red flag. After ordering, we had our chips and bean dip brought to the table(btw, this was the only thing that was decent) My husband needed a refill on his drink and our inattentive waitress sat at a table with two other waitresses folding napkins. It took her 30 minutes to come back to our area and see if we needed anything. After we received our food, which was bland btw, we ordered the California Burrito and it was very dry and mediocre. The elote corn was HORRIBLE. It had a very sweet sauce on it that wasn't appealing at all(on the menu picture, the sauce wasn't on the corn) So wasted $9 on that. Not once while we were eating did Karla come and check on us- she was too bust sitting at a table folding napkins instead of showing customer service. Also, her and two other waitresses were over near the kitchen laughing and playing. So yeah, service was absolutely unacceptable and horrible. I will say that there was an older woman that seemed to be the only waitress doing her job. She tool care of her customers and was constantly checking in with them while the young ones played around. El Patron had gone down since renovations were made. I wonder if they are under new management... it wasn't like this a couple of years ago. We will definitely NOT be patronizing this business anymore! Papa's and Beers on 81...

Service was terrible and over charging for food you don’t receive. It’s such a shame we use to come here a lot then as time went on the service got horrible. Some servers are very rude others just don’t care. I ordered 3 street tacos that are supposed to come with rice and beans. The server acted like he was in a rush…it was not busy in the restaurant.. maybe in a rush to chat with other servers? He messed up my order.. and took too long to come back to ask if my food was okay he dropped my meal off and took off before I could correct him. Then I asked him when he did come back where was my rice and beans but at that point I was starving and had to eat my wrong meal and he told me yes it comes comes with rice and beans and left. Still missing my other half of my meal, I asked him where was it and he said I forgot it. At that point it was too late to bring it to me. Then I get my $70 bill and no changes to my bill. So I told him he messed up my tacos I ordered and then forgot the rest of my meal and if he could fix my bill. He got someone to tell me no they can’t change it and they can bag up my rice and beans. I’m sorry yall but I work hard for my money and to be treated that poorly and still have to pay a full bill on there mess up is just wrong. No tip never will be back again. It’s sad we liked the food but man customer service is not worth ever returning again. Nor say a good...