The Sombrero Restaurant - South of the Border — Restaurant in South Carolina

This restaurant is laughably bad. It is literally the worst restaurant I have ever eaten at. Seriously. I mean, I'm not even mad to be honest. It was so bad it was an experience.

First off, it is a huge Mexican-themed restaurant in the middle of this Mexican-themed park and they had six Mexican dishes on the menu of dozens of options. Ok, so no chips and salsa and queso dip like we were looking forward to. Whatever, we're really hungry so we carried on. We ordered the deluxe nachos for an appetizer. We were served those cheap concession stand round tortilla chips covered in movie theater yellow nacho sauce with some salsa from a can and some sour cream. Quite literally something you'd expect from a middle school lunch room after it just had its USDA budget cut.

I ended up ordering their Mexican combo option and got a burrito, chimichanga, and chalupa. They were all indistinguishable in taste, texture, and ingredients. All three were just grade F ground beef wrapped in a tortilla. A couple of them were topped in shredded Mexican cheese and more canned salsa. There were some condiment sides in 2oz solo cups, one of which was shredded lettuce. Seriously, I got like 8 shreds of lettuce. I couldn't even finish it. I was starving, and I couldn't even finish it.

My wife got their rib eye steak. She was served what looked to be a microwaved slab of steak that was gray and entirely unseasoned. It was hands down the worst steak I have ever eaten, or seen for that matter. It was amazing.

Our kids got a grilled cheese. EVEN THAT WAS TERRIBLY DONE. I couldn't believe it. How do you bastardize a grilled cheese???

Anyway, I paid $60 for the worst culinary experience of my life. I tipped 20%, because I honestly felt bad for the people working there. It can't be easy serving that to people. I give it two stars because, for whatever reason, their microwaved steak and canned vegetable sides were a hit with my 2 and 5 year old. Not sure why, but for their 2 and 5 year old pallets it was fantastic...and it got them to eat some vegetables. So, guess it wasn't entirely bad...but the food though...run. Run and...

This was the worst eating experience of my life! After a great weekend trip to the zoo in Asheboro, my family (3 kids, boyfriend and mother) headed down to South of the Border. We waited until we got there to eat a late lunch (about 2:00pm). We decided to try the Sombrero Restaurant. The hostess was pulling double duty (which likely should have been an indicator) of seating guests and checking guests out. After being seated we got drinks, but were not told until after we received them that there would be a charge on the refills of the soft drinks. (What?!? It doesn't state it on the menu either!!) We ordered. I personally got the salad bar ($10) all you can eat. There were pasta salads, soup, etc as well. However the bar was picked over. The lettuce was not fresh, there were 3 tomatoes, the salsa chips were stale and there was an empty container of bacon bits. I asked 2 separate times if they could please restock the salad bar. We did order an appetizer of onion rings which did finally arrive and were ok. But then we proceeded to wait nearly an hour for food as well as a salad bar restock. We were not the only customers waiting for a long period for food either. They were not jammed pack, but had quite a few other tables, ALL still waiting for food. At this point I had had enough and asked to speak to a manager. Can you believe that they had NO MANAGER on duty?!?! No assistant manager??!? I asked who was in charge! All the waitresses shrug their shoulders. I asked for a check of what we had already gotten (appetizer, drinks, etc) I was pretty ticked off. An older waitress finally told me not to worry about it we could just go. So what little bit we got was free, but I have NEVER been so disgusted with a place. I will say that the waitress was sweet, but seemed a little inexperienced (ie: having to ask for silverware, plates and bowls for salad bar, etc). I would not recommend my worst enemy to eat here!! Total lack of management!! If you want a decent meal with exceptional service go see Joni at Shoneys...

Edit:I threw up shortly after eating here.

Terrible. I ordered the bbq sandwich. The meat came with out sauce on it, the sauce was a table spoon of it in a small cup. So I had to ask for more so I could actually get all of the meat covered. It was sweet baby rays sauce so the sauce wasn’t bad. The meat wasn’t great. I had to ask for another bun bc the one I was served was completely soaked, soggy and drippy. My bun. When this was brought to the managers attention we were told it’s bc of the oils in the meat. I asked “so my food had been sitting there a while then for it to get soggy?” She said no. Mind you it took a LONG time to get our food. My table also ordered the club sandwich and the bread was not toasted at all like they said it would be. When we asked what why it wasn’t we were told “oh the toaster is messed up..” the fries that came as a side was more like a toddlers hand full portion. As In each side was only a couple of fries. We were informed that there is only one cook. The salad bar looked alright. Upon sitting down though we informed our waitress that there was no lettuce at the salad bar and one of our table members would have gotten the salad bar but there was no lettuce. At the end of our meal, we had to have been there at least two hours, the lettuce had yet to be refilled. We were told by a employee at one of the gift shops the best place to eat around here is Waffle House. We tried to give the benefit of the doubt (even after reading reviews) but it seems we should have just gone elsewhere. Our waitress was not an issue. The rest of the staff we encountered were less than pleasant. Don’t waste your time or money. I understand this attraction had been here for a long time but it’s quality is exactly how it looks. Run down...