Jaxon’s Restaurant & Brewing Co

I had been a regular at Jaxons’ since the ‘70s, way before Helsten bought the place from the Maxon family. It was never the same after the sale, but many people, including myself continued to patronize Jaxons for years while it continued to deteriorate before our eyes.
My last bad experience was in 2009, at the location on Mesa formerly occupied by an Outback Steakhouse. The restaurant was so filthy, grimy, disgustingly dirty and the food so awful, it defied description. That was my last visit to a Jaxons.
Here is a quote from the El Paso Times today, that serves to point out that the true kiss of death for a restaurant is when the owner is living in the state of denial and starts to «disagree with the negative comments» of his guests:
«Both Jaxon’s and Cappetto’s were getting mostly bad customer reviews on the Urbanspoon and Unilocal online restaurant review sites in recent months.
Helsten (Jaxons’ owner) said he disagreed with negative reviews of his restaurants, which, he maintained, kept their quality food and service to the end.
„We had a large core group of regular customers. I never felt the operation suffered,“ he said.»
Jaxon’s closing and Helsten’s theory about its «large core group of regular customers» goes to prove that it’s not about how many customers you have. It’s about how many ex-​customers you have that purposefully stay away.

The house soup is amazing! I had the rellano and steak and the steak was completely under seasoned and tough but the rellano was probably one of the best I have ever had. The waitress was friendly and we were able to get good, warm food on our first night in the area.

Food was ok, service was friendly but slow. Ok if you’re out of options, but there are better places to go in El Paso.

My favorite rib joint in town.

When I first moved to El Paso in 2007, Jaxon’s seemed like a good place to go for food, cold beer, and whatever game happens to be on. But over the past year it seems to have slid dramatically. Case in point. On my last visit I had a class of wine that was absolutely foul. The waiter replaced it with something tolerable, but the fact that they were pouring the other vintage kind of threw me off. But that’s not my beef here. My beef is with the beef. I ordered the ribeye, medium. The steak was completely burned, tough, and inedible. However the center was still very rare. This is caused by unthawed (read: frozen) steaks being thrown on a very hot fire. I mentioned it to the bartender. No offer to take it off my bill, however. I’ll give them another shot in a few weeks, see if they improve.

Jaxon’s has surprised everyone by withstanding the national Brewpub fad and subsequent over-​saturation (pardon the pun) of the market leading to fire-​sales on copper tanks and kettles everywhere. However, in doing so, Jaxon’s found time to make very good beer and even expand their operations to the west side of town. Good for them.
I’ve always enjoyed their Nut Brown Ale, which comes of a little heavier than something like Newcastle, but thinner than most nut brown microbrews. Still its very good and a perfect compliment to Jaxon’s delicious tortilla soup.
This location is a bit strange in their motif, as they seem to ‘want’ to be a bar, but come off like a very casual Outback Steakhouse. I wouldn’t go here solely to drink, but its a cool place to grab lunch, a beer, and a little bit of the game.