Mesa Rosa Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Texas

What in the queso blanco is this place.... visited March 30th.

It's been a long while since I've been in such an egregious establishment. Really really telling to see so many reviews that willingly talk about a playground being the peak of a restaurant, which 99% of the time should be a red flag for any person expecting any kind of quality to the food and service they're paying for.

Goodness, where to start? Walking in to a hostess that immediately regarded us not with a welcome, but "a wait time of 20 minutes." This was the only time waited during this visit that wasn't such a let down. Waiting for our waiter(s?) to figure out who was taking any of our orders, getting waters since the choice of drinks was uninspired (whom I presume was the owner had no idea what an Horchata was when I asked if they had it), which matched the rest of the unimaginative menu (if you don't count the Mexican Egg Rolls????)

Our queso was obviously a cheese sauce with some peppers thrown in and had an already hardened skin on the top of it as it reached the table, along with our waters with obvious flecks of dried soap along the rims. After another 30 minutes, we finally got to place an order from their rather limited menu. The lack of a taco on the menu that wasn't a part of the seafood or combo sections was quite the choice. I couldn't decide on anything that sounded too basic or too expensive, so I went with the "Pechuga Rosa", which is just NOT how chicken is referred to at all in most Mexican restaurants (means breast, and never used except by men for obvious reasons). When it finally came out, ran to us by yet another waiter, the queso ladled onto it was, also, already forming a hardened skin on it, set by dry rice and a small bowl of soupy beans with bacon. Yes, the kind served at a cookout. I was flabbergasted throughout the entire experience.... On top of my buddy's "Pechuga Flameado" which had an inedible sauce FAR too spicy to tolerate by any of the 40 Caucasians there, let alone myself, and the lack of ACTUAL food on the place compared to the price and amount of sauce used, the margarita tasting like the mix was expired, and the dishware matching the hospital level food it carried, American 80s-2000s music, random telephone booth outside, random Zoltar inside, I just cannot understand the amount of praise this place has in the slightest.

The idea of going to this place to enjoy VERY subpar Tex-Mex at an abhorrent price because they have a playground is baffling. I don't know who was in charge of the menu nor whom is at the helm of the kitchen, but both of them need a vacation. In Mexico. To learn a thing or...

TLDR - NOT ACCOMMODATING FOR BIG PARTIES. AWFUL.

GOOD place to bring the family on a Friday or Saturday night to relax. Good food and drinks. Great patio and big wonderful outdoor area with playground for the kids. Relaxing beer garden for just hanging out after dinner.

*EDITED REVIEW

TERRIBLE place to bring a big party for a special event. They do NOT take reservations or call-aheads. I went above and beyond a week, day, and hours beforehand to communicate with them that I was bringing a big birthday party of 25 people who were in from out of town. Earlier on the day of, I was told to call when we were on our way. When I did call on our way I was rudely cut off and told that there were no reservations and to just show up.

We showed up before 5pm and waited over an hour to be seated. I did expect a wait, but to wait from 4:45-6pm is a bit much, especially after trying so hard to let them know we were coming with a big party. I requested a specific area to be seated (almost completely empty when we arrived) and after about 45 minutes I was watching them seat new parties in that area. When I asked if we were going to be seated there I was told that there were already people sitting there. I stated that those people were all just recently seated there. The guy then said the (new) reason was that he couldn’t seat a big party there. (I assume because the tables couldn’t be pushed together, yet where they seated us was in 4 separate table groupings that we ended up pushing together ourselves).

They crammed the chairs in so close together (literally chair arms overlapping) that WE had to clean off and pull in one more table so we would actually have room to move the chairs. We ended up being seated RIGHT in front of the loud live music and could barely hear each other. Even the waiter struggled talking to and hearing us due to it being so loud, and us with him. We didn’t get food until we had been there an hour and a half, this resulted in a few people having to leave to eat elsewhere. The wait at the bar was a half hour even early in the night when we were just waiting for a table.

We planned to stay until 9pm eating, drinking, hanging out, and letting the kids play… instead, we left at 7:30 because it was so unaccommodating and uncomfortable. The hostess and waitstaff are always very friendly, but the 2 men (owners? managers?) who are usually dealing with seating are just abrupt and unpleasant, even on our regular...

I am beyond frustrated with my experience at Mesa Rosa Mexican Restaurant. My friends and I planned a dinner here on Friday at 6 PM, expecting a decent evening. Instead, we were met with absolute chaos. The parking lot was a disaster—cars parked haphazardly, on the grass, and people scrambling to find spots. We had to circle for several minutes before finally snagging a space.

We were a party of seven and opted to sit outdoors since the weather was nice—big mistake. The hostess told us we'd get a text "soon" when our table was ready. Well, 20 minutes later, still nothing. We finally went to check, only to see an empty table that had been sitting vacant for at least 10 minutes. Instead of being proactive, the hostess casually asked if we wanted to sit there.

Once seated, the nightmare continued. It took the waitress 10 minutes just to greet us, and another 10 minutes to bring out the complimentary chips and salsa. And guess what? One of the salsas had a hair in it. Disgusting. The waitress had another server bring us queso instead, but things only got worse from there. The co-owner had the audacity to come to our table and accuse us of lying about the hair. Seriously? As if that wasn’t bad enough, we then found another hair in the queso. At this point, we still hadn’t even gotten WATER. It was already 6:40 PM, and when the waitress finally showed up to ask about drinks, we were baffled. Maybe start with water when customers are first seated? When she did bring it, my water was mixed with leftover Sprite—absolutely disgusting.

We placed our food order at 7 PM—a whole 40 minutes after being seated. And then? The waitress vanished. From 7 PM to 7:40 PM, she was nowhere to be found, nor was she attending to other nearby tables. At this point, we had enough. We flagged down the co-manager, asking to at least pay for our drinks so we could leave. The actual owner then came out, and we told him the full story—90 minutes at this place and all we got were two hairs in our food and botched drinks. Thankfully, he comped everything and let us go, but by then, our night was already ruined. We ended up getting dinner at Chick-fil-A just down the road.

Mesa Rosa has horrendous service and terrible hospitality. My group of seven will never return. The only positive? The playground looked well-made, but it's unsupervised, so parents, be careful. Other than that, I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone. Absolutely...