Gran Patron Mexican Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Virginia Beach

I am 100% convinced that this restaurant puts actual water in their liquor bottles. I have ordered drinks twice so far, on two different days.

The first time I ordered a drink, it was $16.99. It was a spicy mango blended margarita—no, correction: a frozen margarita—for $16.99. There was absolutely no alcohol in it whatsoever. The reason I know is because I had been running around all day long, and it was literally the first meal I had the entire day. So, for me to get a drink with no food in my system whatsoever and feel absolutely nothing is unprecedented.

I went back on the Fourth of July—that was my second time going. I decided not to order a frozen drink, considering I guess the frozen drinks don’t come with alcohol. So I decided to order a drink called a Tequila Sunrise. When I saw the bartender pour my drink, I thought, “Oh my God, I am about to be so drunk. They’re going to have to carry me out of here.” Halfway through finishing the drink, I realized there’s no possible way that there isn’t water mixed in with the alcohol. The amount of liquor she poured would’ve made it impossible not to feel something. By the time I finished half of the drink, I felt barely anything whatsoever.

The place is so bright—even at night—it’s disturbing. There’s no ambience whatsoever. I didn’t even want to sit and eat there, so I ordered my food to go, à la carte.

I said I wanted a shrimp quesadilla. They told me, “Oh, it’s a crab and shrimp quesadilla.” So I said, “I can’t have the shrimp quesadilla?” They were like, “Oh no, you want shrimp? We’ll give you shrimp.” I said, “OK. Is it possible that I could have a little container of guacamole on the side?” Because of course, this shrimp quesadilla comes with absolutely nothing—no guacamole, no sour cream, no tomatoes, no nothing. I know that if you don’t specify guacamole, they give you this thing called a guacamole salad or whatever it is. So I specified guacamole, because I didn’t want to pay the $12 for guacamole and chips. They said, “OK, fine.”

I take my order to go, only to come home and realize—what did they do? They gave me the shrimp with this imitation crab. It was barely even edible. The little guacamole I asked for? I got nothing. I wasn’t even happy that I couldn’t get sour cream and the tomatoes with onions on the side, but I was willing to deal with it if I just had my guacamole.

The whole entire order was wrong. I didn’t get the quesadilla that I wanted. I didn’t get the guacamole that I wanted. The drink that I ordered at the bar had water in the liquor.

This place is absolutely terrible and should be closed down. this place should literally be reported to the Better Business Bureau...

While this place has the potential to be great, it’s not there yet. My family and I went on 8/5/25 around 7:45pm. We were seated immediately, which tells you they were packed at all. The restaurant was MAYBE 25% full. We sat outside and the weather and sounds from the ocean and boardwalk were perfect. The waiter came about 10 mins after we were seated. He didn’t understand much English and when I asked for a root beer, he handed me the beer menu. I had to point on the food menu to the drinks to show him what drink I wanted. He came back after 7-8 mins with the drinks and placed them all on the table and said “I don’t know who asked for what”. We had to ask for the complementary chips and salsa. When we asked for queso, he said “what’s that” and we said “the cheese dip”. Now to the food, which in my 37 years of living, I have NEVER had it take 25 mins for food at a Mexican restaurant and the restaurant not even be full. My daughter had Mac and cheese, which she said was a little cold and tasted like Kraft Mac and Cheese (which from looking at it, I’m sure it was). My other daughter had nachos, very basic, nothing to say about those. My husband had the California burrito and said he only had a few pieces of chicken in it. I had the Del Mar Quesadilla and I was highly highly disappointed. I read the description (shrimp, crab, cheese, black beans, blah blah blah) I specifically asked for NO black beans. I get my food and there are scallops, shrimp, and crabmeat. Nowhere in the menu did it say scallops were in it, I would have asked for none as I hate them! So I picked them out of one side and ate that side. The waiter was no where to be found to send the dish back. I get ready to pick the scallops out the other half of the quesadilla and what do I see, BLACK BEANS! It was almost as if the cook added them to that side and realized they were supposed to be in there and tried to take them out but the juice was still there and about 6 beans. I couldn’t even pick them out due to the juice. The waiter didn’t come back for mins. We didn’t see him anywhere. Our drinks were empty and food was blah! He finally comes back and I ask for the check. It took him 10 mins to get it. I tell him about the issue with the quesadilla and I assume he doesn’t understand and says “ok” with a smile. Nothing else. When we left, we see him outside smoking so I’m assuming that’s where he kept disappearing to and couldn’t tend to us. If the waiters are going to smoke, have them do it in the alley way or something. Not right outside of the main entrance to the establishment. We won’t be honing back and won’t be recommending this place to...

My family and I really wanted to give this place a chance but we were waiting for about 2 and a half hours for our food that never came. The waitress kept telling us that she will check on our food and only 1 update we got was that the kitchen was backed up. It was understandable but waiting for that long and seeing other guest get their food and didn’t waited too long after being seated was discouraging. We ended up leaving as it was getting late and we spoke to the waitress that was attending us about the service. She proceed to tell us right when we decided to leave that the kitchen had to close due to back order. She mentioned that she had advised us about this but this was incorrect as we only knew that the kitchen was backed up, not that the kitchen was closing. If we knew about this, we would had left. We were also told by another waiter that there was 2 kitchens and 2 computers that sends the orders separately, this was confusing as we had arrived at 8:30pm and it was already 10:45pm. This location was honestly not managed well during this situation. I hope this is an eye opening to the staff and managers about this and hope they improve in the near future. I wanted to give this location a chance but it failed for our first...