Chepo's Mexican Restaurant - Wasilla — Restaurant in Wasilla

The esthetics and the music is wonderful.

However, this was my first and last time coming to Chepo's. The hostess was abrasive upon entering and just grabbed the menus and started walking to the table without saying anything to my party of six. We followed her unsure if we were supposed to or not. There was not a warm hard off.

Once we got to the table, the majority of the water glasses were dirty and we had to request new ones. I thought it was inappropriate and unusual how the workers were shouting things across the room. Only half of the workers and almost none of the customers were wearing masks inside the building. I did not see any major sterilization happening after customers left their tables. Because of all of this, I did not order anything, nor did I eat the complimentary chips and salsa, nor did I drink from the water glasses (I would also like to point out that I absolutely ADORE Mexican food and have NEVER passed up an opportunity to consume its soul satisfying goodness).

Once the main dishes came, one of the five plates ordered had a whole sheet of paper in it. Another plate had a whole herb twig in it.

When we brought this to the waiter's attention he handled it very appropriately and hastily tried to fix the problem. His customer service was spectacular, even when we asked to speak to the manager. The manager's customer service was NOT up to par. He was defensive from start to finish. He also told us that he, "Already figured out who it was and slapped them." He repeated that several times, as though physically assaulting his cook was what we wanted to hear, and would have made the situation better. When we told him about the water glasses being dirty he dismissed it, stating that the waiter didn't tell him that and that it had never been an issue before. When we showed him the twig he said that it was okay because it is edible, as he broke a piece off and put it in his mouth and continued to argue his point. Instead of just apologizing and trying to make it right, he argued and cut us off continually when we were trying to talk. He stated that he has thousands of people come in daily and they have never had issues like this before. Then we come in and, "Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!" It was as though he was insinuating that we did things to our own food so that we would not have to pay. He had already taken the charge off of the food with the sheet if paper in it.

However, because the rest of the table was thoroughly disgusted by the two different items on the two different plates, paired with the dirty water glasses and lack of masks in the building, they no longer wanted to touch the rest of the food on their plates that were barely eaten. When the table stated they didn't want to pay for the food, but would pay for the drinks the manager argued again and said he would give discounts to the table. The manager only gave $3 off of the meals that were not even halfway eaten.

In the end, we left upset and hungry, went on to other more reliable restaurants before our drive back to Anchorage, and out of more money then planned and necessary. Never again, Chepo's....

I really don’t know what it was. We recently moved here and I thought, we should find the best Mexican place in town and see how it is. Yes, I have high standard for food. I am a bit of a food snob, but I am not unreasonable. So let me explain.

The food: The chips and salsa came out first. They asked if I wanted the hot salsa as well, I thought, yes. The hot salsa was nice. The chips were “ok”. They were basic tortilla chips. Nothing special in any way. The “hot” salsa was medium at best, mild most like and had some flavor. The “cool” salsa was simply tomato paste with water. There was zero flavor other than tomato. I should have taken this as a sign. We ordered adult drinks which eventually showed up and were fine. I ordered the dip flight which had 4 different dips. The yellow queso was 1 tick above Rico’s Nacho Cheese from a 10 lbs can. The white queso was somewhat flavorful but fairly mild. The sour cream jalapeño dip was 99% sour cream with maybe the juice of pickled jalapeños thrown in for “taste”. The guacamole was ok. IT had some flavor and wasn’t bad.

Then I ordered the steak fajitas. About 15 minutes later, the fajitas arrived and the look of the “steak” was very concerning. I immediately asked my wife if they just boiled the beef. There wasn’t a speck of seasoning on it. It was like they dipped the meat in a “flavored oil” equivalent to “Old Bay”. The flavor was absolutely bland. 80 year old seniors would send it back for too little seasoning. It was prepared with tomato quarters….. Yes, tomato quarters. There were a few onion and pepper slices in there but not many. The tortillas (2) were store bought bland, hard and old. They were completely disappointing and I am being very nice here.

The service was very bad. It is entirely possible that our waitress was having a bad day, but you can tend to tell good staff. The others were attentive to their tables. Ours never scanned the room when they entered or left. And sadly, this was extremely infrequent. About every 5 minutes you could see her. I would have to flag her down to get water for the entire table. Every single glass was empty and had been for 10 minutes. This is very bad. When we got the dip, the chips in the basket were empty and she said she’d be right back with more. 10 minutes later, I watch her finally make eye contact with the table and rush to the back and bring chips, fortunately the dip was still warm (the warm ones).

The atmosphere was really nice looking and then it appears as thought they just stopped decorating. It looks like it could have been any place for food. It looked high end, but you couldn’t tell it was a Mexican place at all.

Overall, this place was absolutely horrible. I’d love to show the chef a few seasonings that appear on every single piece of Mexican beef, starting with pepper. Just simple pepper was absent. I don’t know that I could ever return here. I spent almost $100 for 2 people and Taco Bell would have had more flavor and much better service.

This is my experience. I did not exaggerate 1 bit. It really...

I'm not a fan of writing negative reviews, so I'll preface this one by saying that I am from a place much closer to Mexico than Alaska is. That may have an impact on my perception of the food here. Like an Italian going to Australia and finding french fries on their chicken parm.

The first negative is an objective one, so I'll get it out of the way first. We got there early and they weren't at all busy, and yet they sat us at a clearly dirty table. We had to request it be cleaned, and it was obvious that the mess on the table had been left over night by how much scrubbing it took to remove the dried salsa from its surface.

Now for more subjective negatives. While browsing their menu, I noticed that one of their "specialties" was Enchilada de Mole. A tough dish to get right, but as it's listed as a specialty, they have officially accepted the challenge. To me, what makes a good mole is a depth of flavor which comes from proper balancing of spices along with the cooking time to develop those flavors. It's complexity. I cannot speak to their prep or method, as mole takes far too long to make it to-order, it must be made well ahead of time. To me though, this mole sang of canned mole. Very 1-note, almost pasty. It seemed more focused on heat than on flavor. Not at all impressed, would remove the "specialty" tag from this menu item for now.

Next was the rice. Rice is something which can be made to order, and should be. The rice smacked of bulk-made at the beginning of the day and left in a large tray under a heat lamp to be scooped out as needed. It was also surprisingly greasy and had an odd hue to it. While I might entertain someone if they told me it was made to-order otherwise, our food came out maybe 5 minutes after we ordered it. In this case, I will not entertain that anything on my plate was made to-order. Mind you, I do realize that many items which would normally come with Enchiladas de Mole must be prepped ahead of time and assembled at order. Just saying that not everything on that plate should be.

Overall, this may be a great mexican restaurant in Alaska, but it was not as good as most mexican restaurants in the lower 48. Prices were a little steep too considering the incredibly short wait impling that someone just scooped each aspect of my plate out of bins and heated it up slightly. That did not feel like a $18-20...