El Trompo Mexican Grill West Chester — Restaurant in West Chester Township

Almost good for entertainment, yet it is absolutely terrible for kind, attentive or timely service. Food is under seasoned and underwhelming in flavor. Will not be back.

In detail, we were seated pretty quickly which was nice. However, it took ~20 minutes after sitting for the waitress to even begin taking our drink or food orders. So long in fact that we made sure to order our drinks and food at the same time once the waitress finally made it over to us. After placing our orders, water came out in about 10 mins but it wasn’t until about 40-50 minutes after sitting that our alcohol drink orders came out. The last and final drink to come out was simply a draft Modelo. We had to flag the waitress down to remind her that we had still not received the final drink and her response that “the keg was being changed”. This is something that should have been mentioned to us as soon as she knew so that we were not left waiting. Also, she could have at least offered a bottled Modelo as a solution but i digress.

An hour in and we had only gotten one glass of water and our drinks (most of which were improperly made, lacking proper ingredients). She even forgot the queso that my younger siblings had ordered until about that hour mark. She brought that out and said she would give us the queso for free. Cool.

However, after about an hour and 20 minutes of waiting total, while watching other parties arrive, get seated, served, eat, and leave around us we decided to just ask for the waitress for the bill for our drinks so we could leave. We were tired of waiting. We had only seen the server at our table about 3 times total. She never replenished water, brought napkins, nothing expected in even decent, sub par service.

the food started to magically appear out of the kitchen minutes after we asked to pay for drinks and leave. We refused the food—because it’s the principle of the poor, inattentive service we experienced.

The manager comes out with the ticket and tells us all that the kitchen had just received the order 25 minutes ago. That’s awesome on the kitchen to get our order out so quickly.

However, this tells us that waitress had forgotten or neglected to put our order into the system when she took it. Reminder-she took our food order 20 minutes into us sitting there and at the point of refusal, we had been there for an hour and 20 minutes. Soooo.. somebody’s lying there.

Instead of just allowing us to be cordial and respectfully pay for our drinks we consumed and waited too long for, the manager rudely tells us to “leave” and “get out”.

All in all… the service is trash and the employees can do wayyy better at their jobs. And from the other experience i had beforehand, i concluded the food was bland and lukewarm in temp. Terrible...

Well we have been waiting patiently for them to open because we are all about good Mexican food. Unfortunately, taco bell was a bit better than El Trompo. First I will say we ordered thru GrubHub, the delivery was good, and it arrived within the allotted time, even a bit earlier. But the food wasn't warm or even room temperature, it was cold. Again, disappointing but nothing chef Mike couldn't heat up. We specifically put in comments to include extra flour tortillas for the fajitas and one of the combinations we ordered. We did that because there was nowhere else to ask. They had no listing on their menu to request and pay for the tortillas. I knew there would be an extra charge, but instead of extra we got zero tortillas, so we had to heat some up so my son could eat his fajitas. As for their refried beans, I'm fairly certain they are from a can. I've been making refried beans from scratch for over 20 years, and these are not from scratch. They are orange for goodness sake. The mini tacos were ok, but they advertise you can mix and match, but on their Grubhub menu, you can only pick one option, and not 6 different ones. The combination meals we ordered were enchiladas, and I'm not sure if it was because the food was cold, but my son who loves enchiladas said they tasted weird and the sauce was very bland. The same went for the rice, it was fluffy, but very bland. My husband, who lived in Mexico for 10 years was thrilled when he saw they had mole on the menu. He said it was pretty good. So all in all, we were fairly disappointed in the flavor of the food. For an authentic and very delicious dinner you are better off going to Tylersville and Route 4 to Coco's. They make everything homemade, they have amazing beans and rice, and their fajitas are to die for.

UPDATE after owner responds to review:

While I understand you are a new restaurant, you didn't address the fact that we were missing your "homemade tortillas," the food was cold, and the food was bland. Whether you make food from scratch or not, you are not treating your customers well if you are allowing vold and missing food to leave...

Update: Took us awhile to get back. We shouldn’t have bothered.

We stopped by today for lunch. Can’t comment much on the food, except to say the chips were stale and the salsa was bland. The service was — well there was no service to speak of. No one asked if we wanted water, much less drinks. We sat patiently for 15-20 minutes while numerous servers passed us by. People who arrived at the same time or after us had food and/or beverages. I guess we either needed to be a loud, obnoxious group of four or a family with three or four kids to be waited on in a timely manner. Or at all. As expensive as this place is, we easily would have dropped $100 or more. But, we went elsewhere and were greeted and served promptly. But that’s another review. The employees here are short on personality and way short on the concept of customer service. The music is loud and some of the patrons were louder. But. THEY were able to get drinks and order food, so I guess there’s a lesson on here somewhere.

The food was good and the drinks were better. Our server was great until she disappeared. I’d rather have a paper menu or scan a code with my phone, because the menus felt a little gross. We went when it wasn’t busy, but I’m not entirely sure they’re good with the social distancing thing. Will we go back? Probably. It’s better than some places we’ve tried in that area when we make a trip to Ikea or...