Escalante's — Restaurant in The Woodlands

Me and my family, about 15 people, decided to go to the Woodlands location, because we were in the area; however, the town & country is our usual location for their quality ppl., fun atmosphere, friendly wait staff, and the food is always fresh and hot starting with the tortilla chips. Nothing compared with the Woodlands location. We had an awful experience with our waiter being rude since we got there. He was short, impatient, and told my sister not to move from her seat if she was paying a separate ticket!? My sister had just gone to talk to one of us on the other side of the table, because we were a lot of ppl. And couldn't hear each other, so that was the first one. Then my other sister got there a little after we did and he was annoyed because he needed to add another small table to have her, her husband and two small children. Well, when he abruptly turned around, he knocked my sister's 2 years old girl to the floor.! And he didn't apologized for that. We all noticed his horrible attitude. On top our chips were old and the last of the batch with a bunch of small broken pieces. My mother and i got the tortilla soup and both of us looked at each other surprised that it was bland, not tasty at all. I couldn't tell if they even put any cheese in it. it was somewhat warmed, but not hot at all. Just think, we were 15 ppl. I paid for my daughter's and my meal $65 and i didn't get a full meal plate like the others did, so i could imagine their bill had to be $100 or more, so alone on that table of. 15 ppl. , they probably made nearly $500, but we don't care to spend money for good service and quality food! He, the waiter, Rafael, also charged $18% tip automatically on the ticket for his bad service. Keep in mind, he never, ever came back once to check on us, or to asked if we needed anything. He also forgot my drink. When i went to look for the manager, Ana, to tell her our experience, to my surprise, the waiter, the manager, and two other workers were congregating and talking about us! I heard them. That's so disrespectful and unethical. I couldn't believe it! I'm truly disappointed of the entire experience my family and i had at this location! If you have a party of 10 or more, for the money you're going to spend here, my recommendation is to find another place and find what we all look for at a restaurant , which is excellent service and good...

This was an absolute waste of money. To call it fine dining is a joke. I’m giving one star just for the view. We were a party of 7 celebrating a birthday and we dined here on 28th June 2021. I honestly don’t know where to put in a positive comment other than the view which is good, but Del Frisco’s a couple restaurents down which we frequent often, has a better view. Food ( we ordered the family fajita platter and other entrees ) was below average. The server didn’t know that the drinks menu had “pitcher of sangria” which we wanted to order. He didn’t give us dinner plates and brought the food out - expecting us to eat off the table??? The sangria did not taste like it had any alcohol. The fajitas were dry and tasteless. The server ( Kevin) forgot to bring the tortillas and went away and my son had to go ask another server. After another 15 minutes, our server got the tortillas which were not warm and by that time the rest of the food was cold. There were only 6 tortillas for a family fajita so we had to ask for some more. I’m surprised that the tortillas were not hand rolled as they are in even some average Tex Mex restaurants. Though we reached at 7:45 pm and sat on the patio, and restaurent closes at 9 pm, the cleaning staff already started cleaning the floors and tables with complete disregard to us. The complimentary cake for the birthday person seemed like a leftover piece of cake and to top it all, the ‘CANDLE’ was a tortilla crouton which refused to light! We should have walked out without paying our experience was so bad. Worst $250 spent. SAVE YOUR MONEY AND GO TO EL TIEMPO OR ANY OTHER PLACE THAT IS TRULY...

Main meals are bizarrely mediocre given the location and setting. Have eaten here 4 times now in 8 months, and each time the main was the worst part of the meal. I really like the appetisers, and the freshly made guacamole is superb. My wife likes the cocktails here, and they have a good selection of bottled beers like Modelo, Shinerbock, etc.

However the quality of the mains is poor. They’re good sized portions but the chicken is cheap and rubbery, and the steak is fatty and I’d think twice about feeding it to my dog. The 1st time I ate here I had something off the specials as I thought it would be a safe choice, what I got was the worst quality steak I’ve ever had in any restaurant. A while later I got talked into going back, so ordered Alambres as it had some shrimp, chicken and steak as part of 1 dish and figured they can’t mess up all 3. The steak was just as bad as the first visit, I don’t know why they serve such a gristly cut of beef. I’d happily pay more to have better quality. The Shrimp was pretty good, the chicken was very average.

The other strange thing they do is make the great tasting fresh guacamole as an appetiser, but for mains they put a dollop of generic pre-made/jar guacamole on your meal which makes no sense as you’ve just tasted the good, fresh stuff. Does the restaurant manager not see how stupid this is?

This ought to be a very good restaurant, but poor quality ingredients really...