El Toro Mexican Restaurant & Cantina — Restaurant in Washington

My family and I have been loyal long time customers, since the restaurant opened in fact and it's our favorite restaurant. My review today is a build up of a few bad experiences in recent times. Now on to my review, we arrived at the restaurant today and walked up to the hostess desk, and the woman asked how many in your party, we said 7 and we asked specifically for a table as one of the people in our party is elderly (91) and has major mobility issues. She said she would have to check to see if a table is available, she walked to the back seating area and after waiting about 10minutes and hadn't heard anything I walked to the rear seating area and found the hostess and another employee sitting there having a conversation about what I don't know , though I'm sure it wasn't work related. I look around and all the tables in this area are empty and ready to go but they just haven't turned the lights on in this section. So now that I had "busted" them the woman comes back up front to seat us. We make our way to where she wants us to sit and she tries to seat us at a booth, we tell her No that won't work and she starts to give us attitude and some excuse about it. We refuse the booth and finally get seated at a table, which was fine except for the fact that it was cramped for the amount of people in our party. We sit and talk amongst ourselves for a few minutes while looking over the menus and have some chips and salsa. About 5 or 10 minutes later another large party gets seated behind us. At this point the server walks up and says out loud which one of you was first? We mention that we had been seated first and the server goes directly to the just seated party and took their orders before ours even though we told her that we were ready. Server comes back and takes our orders. A short time later our orders arrive and they have managed to get them wrong. Everyone in our party said NO jalapenos in our food and not only is there jalapenos in it but extra in fact. So they take only about half of our orders back to "fix" them. And when the finally returned with the so called fixed orders, they were still wrong this time the meat was the wrong kind. Those in our party who didn't have to have their meals fixed kept eating. My father who was one of the few who didn't have to send his back ended up eating about 10 bites of his meal as he found multiple hairs in it. He was going to tell our server about it but she never once came back to check on us. Well since she never came to check on us he got up too his whole plate and took it to the front desk, and whoever was working apologized about it and told us they would take it off our bill. The rest of the meal was fine until the bill came. They didn't remove my father's meal as they said they would. And then charged us for the non wanted jalapenos as well charging us for sour cream when we specifically had asked for NO sour cream on one person's meal, only problem with that was that it states in the menu that they come with sour cream. This isn't the first time similar things like this has happened...

The only reason I am giving two stars instead of one is because previously we have had great experiences with staff when picking up orders to go and the food is always good. However we took our two and a half year old with us tonight to actually dine there and had a horrible experience.

We saw a waitress at first an okay amount then we rarely saw her during our hour stay, we also never got her name. I am assuming based on my personal experience working as a waitress in the past and having a father whose been in the restaurant business for over 30 years - this is likely due to the fact that another customer who looked like a better "tipper" came in. I could be incorrect but she went from being very attentive the first 15 minutes (almost overly so which is okay and nice/different to see).

This attitude quickly changed though to us having to stop her to place our appetizer order and again having to stop her to place our meal order when she quickly tried to ask if "everything was okay" referring to the appetizer - while walking away to another table, without waiting for a a reply. Both our appetizer order and our dinner orders were incorrect (I didn't complain about the appetizer even though we'd ordered the quesadilla without anything but beef and cheese explaining specifically it was for the toddler). It came with all the veggies including the jalapenos so he wouldn't touch it ($11 wasted thank you!).

My dinner order also had tomatoes again which I personally hate (I'm usually not picky about these things just pull the extra off). But it's difficult/different when you're clearly being ignored and paying $60 for a meal. Mistakes happen but she was treating us like an annoyance long before getting the orders wrong and blowing us off.

Thank you, we will no longer even be doing take out here after this experience. I'm sorry for the minimal 10% tip my fiancee left you I usually always leave at least 15% even with bad service but I've never been so disrespected in a restaurant and honestly that $11 appetizer you ignored our request on could've easily been part of your tip had you not ignored us and made us feel like we just threw money in the garbage. Guess we could've complained and sent it back had we actually seen you a little more?! The sad thing is having relied on tips for income and having family members who are in the restaurant business I've tipped up to 50% on a bill before. The biggest error you made and many of my old coworkers made was assuming someone wouldn't tip well based on their looks or if they had children, etc. Sadly the young man at Happy Teriyaki down the road last week got twice the tip you did on half the bill - because he treated us like people and not an annoyance to be brushed off.

Side note - I also don't usually feel so outraged to leave a nasty review much less a long one, I like leaving positive ones much more because so few people do. But I honestly never want to do business with El Toro in Spanaway again. I'll make sure I share my experience with family, friends, neighbors, and...

Came in to eat last night for a friends birthday dinner. Sat down @ the table w/ our group of friends. We had the server named Michelle older gal curly hair. There was about 8-10 of us. She stood at one end of the table and took our drink orders first. I ordered a Pacifica beer. She asked me if I wanted to drink it out of a glass I said sure. She brought our drinks an brought me my beer in a bottle. I just shook it off and drank it like that. (But why ask if I want out of glass)? Then she came to take our orders and again standing at the opposite end of table can barely hear because she’s talking very light and fast. I ordered the chimichangas. And I thought I heard her lightly say beef shredded chicken or steak but really fast. So I said what was that sorry could barely hear you. So she loudly as loud as she can says ranch French blue cheese sarcastically. And then says, I’m just kidding hahahaha again super loud what kind of meat do you need? I said beef. Confused why she was acting this way.. when she left to put our orders in. So then the food comes.. mind you out of the 10 people we had with us all of the males in our group were treated w/ 100 percent customer service but all the females got attitude. When she brought our food out my meal had shredded Chicken NOT what I ordered. And two of my girlfriends meals were returned because it wasn’t what they ordered. Also I asked for silicate. Because our end of the table had none. After bringing our food out it took her 25 min to bring Silverware. My food was cold and not what I ordered. So I kept my mouth shut because I was about done with how things were going for no reason. I ate what I could but I picked at it because it was not good at all. So me and two of my girlfriends go outside to have a smoke as well as my girlfriends husband. Right as we light up Michelle the server comes out to my friends husband and says we’re going to sing happy birthday to your wife. I look @ the server and ask do you mind if you could wait 2 mins for us to come inside. The server MICHELLE then says you guys don’t have to come in for the singing and walks inside. My jaw dropped as well as my other friend standing next to me. I go inside two min after and of course she had already sang happy birthday. My friends husband apologized to me and said I don’t know what is up with this server. So we stay for 20-30 min she then comes and asks for our last rounds of drinks asks everyone what they want I order the same drink as the firsts. She brings everyone’s out but MINE!!!!!! I just let it go and got my bill. I look @ my bill and she charged me for two different beers which only one I received and two meals. Knowing I only ordered 1!!!!! I paid and got out of there. I was so embarrassed for how that night went I never in my life have been treated so poorly. I hope her manager see this. I will be getting ahold of corporate as well because it wasn’t just one thing it was the whole night....