El Ranchero Restaurant — Restaurant in Spruce Pine

Downtown Spruce Pine,NC. The Hubby and I decided to take our lunch break here, on the lower level street in downtown Spruce Pine. Sheme on us, We have been here before.

The restaurant seems to have been hit hard from Covid; Tables looked worn, seats at booths were worn to the extent that a great many had their pleather worn completely through the backside. The ambience of the place reminded me of a "handyman special" with its musty odor, the dark interior, and the nice, but too loud sound system's blaring throughout.

Out waitress took our order - taco salad for me; a burrito for the husband.

When it arrived, only a few minutes after ordering, Husband's burrito with the fixings looked substantially like what a burrito should look like. My taco salad, however, looked unmistakenly like the gruel served to Oliver in the story.

Sitting on a low taco shell bowl (tasty) was a sorry, soppy pile of a small bit of cooked lettuce, the meat-onion-white cheese-guacomole- and sour cream, soupy with a watered down white cheese sauce liberally soaking through absolutely everything near it on my plate.

It looked disgusting. It tasted worse.

It will be quite a while before I come back to see if things there...

Would give zero stars if I could. I called in an order and went to pick it up about 20 minutes later. The guy working the register evidently only spoke very rudimentary English and tried to charge me 18 bucks for 3 chicken tacos. When I told him I had called ahead he asked again what I wanted and had to look on the menu. Evidently nobody had written down my order and they hadn't even started making it even though there was only one couple in the restaurant at a table and one other guy waiting on a pickup order. I have eaten here entry of times in the past and the food has usually been fine but this is the third time in a row something like this has happened to me here, so I will not be...

I always like to give a restaurant multiple times to see if its maybe the busy-ness that caused the not so great experience however unfortunately this has been the 3rd or 4th time there, it was not busy at all and the food was just so so... I had gotten the ACP which is basically just rice, steak and the queso cheese. At 8.99 or 9.99 (cant quite remember) you would think that if they didnt put much queso on and you asked for a little more they wouldn't try to charge you more. The cost to make this meal is so cheap! And most places it's a huge plate but this was just a small dinner plate with tough chewy and somewhat burnt pieces of steak, some rice and minimal queso.......