El Mexico Cafe — Restaurant in Wichita

If I could I would give this place a Negative 10. I have never been treated so badly at a restaurant before. I will not be going back and I will be sharing this story on every Social Media Platform I can. Tonight I went to this restaurant because normally the food is good, the staff is friendly, and the prices are reasonable. That was not the case tonight. Our waiter took forever to take our drink order. We had to wait even longer for our food order to be taken. Another 40 forevers before we got our food. My nachos were cold and when we ran out of drinks we never got refills. I had to flag down another waiter to get a refill. The place wasn't even busy so the service should not have been this bad. Then when I got the check I was charged for items we never received. They were even kind enough to add a 20% gratuity to my check. They claim that the gratuity is a policy they have and that it is on their menu. The waiter never mentioned this policy to us nor did he show us this on the menu. I was threatened with police when I refused to pay the gratuity. The register lady was rude, hostile, and a thief. She even reached across the counter and snatched cash out of my hand scratching me in the process. She is lucky I didn't call the cops and file assault charges. I demanded my cash back after she had charged my card and she refused until I pulled my phone out and threatened to call the cops. When she handed me my debit card receipt I put the correct total, the correct tip that the lousy waiter actually deserved, and signed it. After I left I checked my account and found that this thief actually charged my card for the 20% Gratuity. I will be contacting my bank tomorrow about this and I will also be calling the owners to let them know about the type of thieves they have working there, the poor customer service, and the negative representation they are getting. I wilI be filing a report with BBB about them stealing my money and using my card in a fraudulent manner. I have worked in the food service industry and I have never been treated this way. I will do what I can to make sure people are aware of what's going on so they don't make the mistake of eating at this place or being robbed of their money by the nasty monster behind the...

If you’re looking for a place offering traditional Tex-Mex food made with quality ingredients and love, this isn’t it. It used to be good but whoever owns this place now seems to have sacrificed flavor and quality for convenience and cost. The cheese is shredded processed cheese instead of real cheddar, and the chili con carne sauce over my processed cheese enchilada was so bad, I could not force my self to eat it and requested that I not be charged for it, which they respectfully honored. The refried beans were bland and may have come from a can. The rice was not traditional Mexican rice but seems to have been instant rice with a bit of color added and was lacking the traditional toasted rice, chicken broth, tomato sauce, garlic and onion flavors. The hamburger meat in the taco was absolutely bland and at 7:45pm, the frying oil imparted a strange and unappetizing flavor. The guacamole may have been from a food supplier but was acceptable and had diced tomato in it, but it was missing onion, jalapeños, and cilantro which constitute authentic guacamole. The salsas were fine but the hot one lacked heat and there was no other hot sauce available. A sliced jalapeño was given but it was extremely mild and could have benefitted from some roasting over a flame or a griddle. No, the quality was not at all what I expected, having remembered what the food used to taste like years ago. On the plus side, the environment was clean and refreshingly remodeled from what I remember was kind of worn and dank. The service was also exceptionally friendly, efficient and quick. Sadly, I cannot recommend this place on account of the food which is so Americanized, bland, and without the love that came out of Mexican...

The food here was subpar overall, some diamonds in the rough but nothing that blows your mind by any means. Their chips are made fresh, which is nice, I did enjoy them. The Guacamole was pretty fresh and tasted great. The fried flour tacos were pretty good as well, but that's about where the good parts end.

The cheese used on the tacos was absolutely disgusting, tastes like shredded american velveeta style cheese, just did not taste very well at all. The refried beans were runny and tasted worse. The mexican rice was ok, not super dry but just very plain. The salsa placed on our table tasted straight like pizza sauce, even had a garlic tinge to it. The kids' meals were obviously frozen, the chicken strips had a freezer taste to them, the portions were also quite small.

If this restaurant were priced lower than some of it's competitors, I may have given a higher score for value on price. That's just not the case though. It's prices are competing with other sit-down restaurants like Abuelo's, and the quality just does not match, does not even get close.

Overall it was a disappointing experience, the tacos were the brightest spot and even then it was only if you scraped that horrid cheese off of them. We had the same kind of experience the last time we were there a year earlier and even voiced the concerns to the management, only to be told we were wrong. We wanted to give this place another chance, we'd been coming here for years, but just can't do it any longer. I hope El Mexico will change some of their ingredients to be the high quality mexican cuisine we enjoyed, but until we hear differently, we won't be...