El Chaparo Restaurant

Heads up everyone! This place is closed, and no longer in business. We were here 9÷28÷15 and all the tables are gone

In honor of one of my favorite Simpsons characters: Worst. Mexican. Ever.
Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s harsh to put things like this in print. But when the first thing that hits your table is a basket of rancid chips, you know it’s going downhill from there. And I mean pulled through motor oil and sat outside in the sun for a week rancid. Blech! Please, let me divulge the rest of my woes about this dining experience.
Our server can be best described as vacuous. When one of my colleagues asked what type of sauces were available for enchiladas, she flipped her hair over shoulder and replied, «I don’t know. What’s it say on the menu?» Of course you can’t expect much from a server who keeps sitting down at a booth with her friends behind a partition.
One associate ordered steak ranchero. Which apparently at El Chaparo means shoe leather in red sauce. Poor girl. The other did order the enchiladas verdes, but it lit her on fire. It was mostly jalapeño and not enough tomatillo. The other ordered a mixed quesadilla, and while I didn’t try it, she said she couldn’t distinguish any flavor and left most on her plate.
I bet you’re asking yourself, what did you order? A simple California burrito. Or so I’d hoped. No rice? Check. No beans? Check. No cheese? Check. Minimal sauce, meat, and onions? Check. Double checking the menu to make sure I’m not insane? Check.
So here it was. Two 8″ tortillas laid out and rolled like a cigar instead of one single 12″ tortilla. Yep. At this point I just had to stop myself from becoming over critical and tasting it. Meh! Chipotle sauce. Not my fave.
I’ve never commented on the drinks before, but sweet tea shouldn’t be cloudy, should it?
Ugh. Let’s get out of here! Another thing that bugged me was paying for the meal. When the server came with the bill, I tried to hand her payment but she walked away. We sat for a few minutes more and then decided maybe it was a pay up front kind of deal. (We did walk by the register on the way in.) Of course she came running from her group of friends. Ah, go back to your amigas, chica. I can handle it from here.

Not too bad. We were a group of 4. Service was great and food was good. Eat here instead of Amici… that place is nasty.

I will start off by saying that I was with 3 people who had eaten here once before with good service and good food. That was the positive.
We arrived to an almost full restaurant that seemed like it would be great. Right after we arrived there was a lot of people showed up and there was a long wait. This increased my hopes that this restaurant would meet/​exceed my expectations. We were seated at a big table on a nice patio where you could see all the action around of the other restaurants and movie theater. Our server saw us pretty quickly and seemed friendly. Margarita’s were sub par as it was mostly mix, although the $ 16 dollar price tag for a pitcher was not bad. Others had sangria, which tasted like wine mixed with water, no bueno. We ordered a cheese dip with our drinks and it took about 25 minutes to come out. Luckily for our server we had decided we were in no rush that evening. Cheese dip was OK, but it is pretty hard to screw up cheese dip.
The rest of the night went down hill. More drinks took about 15 or 20 minutes to arrive and they were ordered at the same time as our food. A little side not here, there was a table beside us that had been waiting a while for food, and the server informed them that the kitchen was about 18 minutes behind. That got up and left about 20 minutes later when our drinks arrived. our food took about 50 minutes to come to the table. We are talking about taco’s, a burrito and cheese quesadilla mainly. The quesadilla looked golden brown on the outside, but on the inside none of the cheese was melted. When we asked if they could possibly take it back and melt the cheese, they said not sure, but they could see what they could do. Food was average, but definitely not worth the 2hr and 20 minute investment of the evening.
I would not recommend this place, as there is an Italian place right next door that had good food and fast service per our conversation with passers by. Also, just another funny tidbit, the next family that sat at the table beside us where the people had left. They also left when we did after waiting an 1hr 15min and still had no food or drink refills. As we were leaving we were laughing with many other tables who had drinks and salsa with no chips and had been waiting 30+ minutes for their food. Good luck to them.
I can’t expect this place stays in business more than 6 months if something doesn’t change.