El Jaripeo — Restaurant in Warrenton

There’s a fellow local Yelper I follow who’s been here and really likes it (and since she gave a fav of mine a try a little while ago) I added El Jaripeo to my hit list and finally had the opportunity to try it on a weekday. I met a colleague here for a working lunch. The staff was prompt and friendly with the service. The menu has all the typical Mexican favs.

We started with their spicy salsa and guacamole. The spicy sauce was really nice and was loaded with deep redness and hot pepper seeds. I really enjoyed it, especially when combined with the guac! The guac was fresh and tasted amazing! It looked great too! Many Mexican joints pre-make large batches of guac and in order to do that, they usually blend it down with lots of citrus, but this was clearly freshly made and that freshness came through in the flavor and looks.

My entrée consisted of chicken fajitas. I got the dinner size and there was enough food there for 2 people! Lots of chicken was left over, which will be lunch the next day. The chicken was flavored nicely and tasted great. I loved the onions and peppers that came with it as well. I’m trying to eat healthy, so I didn’t eat the rice or refried beans that came with it, but they looked decent. The tortillas were huge, which was my only gripe, as I would have preferred the smaller, single “taco” size tortillas.

Overall – Really good! ...

Being from San Antonio, TX, I might be considered a snob when it comes to Tex-Mex food, specifically with chips and salsa.

Living in Seattle, Tucson, South  Carolina, and VA, my wife and I are always nervous about what the next recommended Tex-Mex place will be.

We recently moved to Warrenton, VA, and like always started looking to see if there was anything in town worth trying. The first recommendation we got was a flop. That's a different review...

El Jaripeo was next on the list, being conveniently located off of Highway 211, just past the Wawa. The name for one was interesting, Bull Rider, and every day/ lunch there are cars in the parking lot. It's always a decent sign. But we had been let down by that criteria in all the other states because the local thought authentic Mexican food was Tex-Mex.

Upon entering, there was a short wait period of 7m. And the staff apologized for that. Hahaha

Promptly upon being seated, the salsa came. It was divine.

When we looked through the menus, it seemed like we had been transported home.  I had the sea food enchiladas, and it was good. I was not fond of the red sauce used. Overall, the quality of ingredients and preparation was right on the money.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience. We have been back three times since, and I can recommend the cheese sauce on the seafood...

If I could leave 0 stars I would. Service here is the worst service I’ve ever experienced in my life. Came here with a party of 3 and every single one of our meals were incorrectly made and on top of that incorrectly sent out the 2nd time around. Meal was cold. Only thing in the dinner served correctly was our soft drinks. Once we received our check all 3 servers were rude and the items that were 100% incorrect they still expected us to pay full price for, we spoke to management 3 times regarding the bill and he didn’t say a word no apology no taking any kind of responsibility for there mistakes and most he’d do is take $8 off a $50 bill and that was after we asked for the 2nd time for money to be taken off. When we asked for the manager to come back he sent a random server whose response was “so what” “so you want free for” and laughed in our face about the food being completely wrong and freezing cold. He said he didn’t see a problem with anything we were saying and saw no wrong doing on there end. I’ve never dealt with such rude, unprofessional, and disgusting customer service in my life. I will never return here nor recommend this...