Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Town of Salina

Excellent food, never disappointed. Portions are decent and prices are reasonable. Staff is usually very polite and attentive. It has a very authentic feel here. Only complaint is the size of the restaurant and the parking. On a busy night, it's like eating in a tiny, cramped, city-type restaurant with very limited seating and parking, as it used to be Burger King.

Edit: -2 stars after my most recent visit. Got takeout this time. Guy named “Salvador” who took my order over the phone was extremely short and rude. Probably shouldn’t be answering the phones there with an attitude like that. When I went to pick it up, saw that there was a new “To go” charge added for an extra dollar that wasn’t there the last few times I got pick-up.

Salvador hovered over me while I signed my receipt, took his pen and didn’t say a word after I thanked him.

Edit 3 - Officially done with this place. Ordered takeout tonight and was told 15-20 minutes. I figure that’s inaccurate and show up after 40 minutes. I get told it’s still not ready, kitchen’s backed up, fine. The whole restaurant has maybe 6 parties total, but okay, no problem. 4-5 takeout orders show up and get their food immediately in the mean time, while I wait another 20 minutes. Once again, the person handling takeout is hovering over me while I sign the receipt.

I decide that the order must be accurate since I waited all that time, and if anything, they might load it up. Nope. I should’ve known better. I’m missing the signature part of my entree (salsa) after specifically making sure it was included during my takeout call. The beans and rice combined were half the portion size you’d get if you ate in the restaurant.

Then, my wife’s meal didn’t have the bean substitute that I asked for TWICE over the phone to make sure it was okay. I had such a small order, how do I get this many issues? Never getting...

Only giving one star because there is no lower rating option.

Taco Bell and Burger King combined with only half the funding- that’s Rio grande.

The margaritas weren’t that bad. They definitely were made with syrup, at least the house margarita definitely was. My boyfriend got the hornitas one and it was actually decent. Mine was overly sweet but I still liked it enough.

We got steak nachos for an appetizer and the meat had a strong fishy taste to it. It tasted like it was cooked with fish. The chips were so artificially red and green they were literally leaking dye into the cheese. The meat was way over cooked. It was super dry and rubbery.

My boyfriend got the rio grande burrito for his entree. It was decent but came with mini quesadillas that tasted like weird grilled cheese and had a sauce that tasted identical to crappy off-brand, canned tomato soup.

I got the carnitas tacos. The meat was at least 75% fat. I know carnitas is a fatty meat and order it at most Mexican restaurants I go to. The “meat” of these tacos, however, was almost entirely fat pieces. It was incredibly greasy and immediately made me feel sick to my stomach.

To top things off, the very inattentive and unfriendly waiter came over to us (much to our surprise) and asked us how the food was. When we told him politely that I didn’t care for the tacos as it was almost entirely fat he just shrugged his shoulders and have us a condescending smirk. Not only did he not take any money off of the bill, he never apologized for the food or even considered my opionion.

This place is so so so terrible. I don’t think I’ve ever had a worse experience with “customer service” (more so the lack there of) in my life. I will NEVER go back there and will be going out of my way to tell people how...

I live nearby and I love mexican food and I really wanted to love this place. The food is good. The in-house dining service is fairly good. The pick-up service (and I write this during COVID) is so unbelievably bad I can't believe they have survived in the pandemic.

About 75% of the time I place an order (whether it be via their own website system, chownow, or doordash,) they are unaware of the order when I arrive for pickup. This is based on dozens of orders. They usually bumble around for a few minutes and eventually tell me they see it and then clearly proceed to go start making the food with no apology for the delay. About half those times they actually start arguing with me like its somehow my fault they lost the order.

Tonight they essentially refused to give us our food because they "don't have the order" despite the fact we showed them the chownow receipt with date/time/order number AND a screenshot of my credit card statement showing the pending payment. They told us we would have to pay for the meal again. After about 30 minutes of arguing (and me thinking I'm done, I'm never coming back here) they somehow find the order. They were confused because it was under Matthew Gandy, not Matt Gandy. We were lectured to as though this was our fault because we should have given them the correct name. They then proceeded to go start making the food (because they apparently never bothered to in the first place, but again, our fault).

There's not a lot of good mexican food around here, but I can't take this poor service any longer and won't be ordering from the Rio Grande Mexican...