El Original TX MX

Tired of Christina Izzo of Time Out and others bashing this joint. The place lives up to its name– «the Original.» I’ve been here several times and firstly, the place is gorgeous– a Tex-​Mex NY dream. Spacious, banquettes, wood, American flags flying. Design and location in the Skyline Hotel along very wide 10 Ave is unique.
I ordered three breakfast tacos the other day to go for $ 13
I reheated them for lunch, Flour tortillas, eggs, pico, retried beans & queso fresco
Fresh, warm tortillas around all those Flavors, a slight kick from the jalapeño in the pico
Delicious! Everything I’ve eaten here with the exception of the mediocre chips is exceptional flavor wise. I haven’t tried the guac., but their dishes rock!

3.5 actually. Best part was excellent service from bartender. Disappointing Guac (not the freshest) and everything was really wanting in spice level. Fajita meat was very good for NY but small portion for price. Migas bfast tacos were yummy but needed some sort of house made spicy sauce on top! If anyone important is reading this might I recommend making your own version of something like tacodeli’s doña. Still I was thankful for migas.
Super spacious interior is nice if you’re feeling claustrophobic. Since its popular to note your familiarity with tex mex here I’ll go ahead and say that I’m not Texan at all (CA born to TN to FL to NY personally) but I’m married to one. He was most excited about the beer selection. I just realized we didn’t have any salsa. Not sure how that happened or what that situation is!!! We were in a hurry. B said «I’d definitely come back here.»

Pre made guacamole. Too lemony.
Chips were good.
Rice and beans were good.
Salsa was delicious.
Margarita was excellent.
Service was relatively good!

Let me tell you — I got asthma. But as soon as I walked into this place I felt like I could breath better. Such a huge space for a restaurant. Not stuffy like all these other New York joints.
So I take a deep breath, and before I exhale I’m greeted with a kind smile and a warm «hello.» My buddy and I sit down. Were ready to order.
Our waiter looked liked a lumberjack version of Don Drapper from Mad Men — great hair — and a great guy. Didn’t catch his name. I’ll call him Don. Don told us about there new AWESOME HAPPY HOUR. $ 5 Margarita on the rocks. Sold. My buddy got a $ 6 frozen Margarita. Sold.
Not only does Don come back with the margaritas — but he comes back with complementary chips and salsa. What a guy.
I ordered The steak and chicken fajita combo. I like my meals to be hands on. ($ 25) Not a scrap left of my plate. Delicious. Don sold my buddy there chimichanga special they had going on that day. The thing was the size of a queso covered football. He couldn’t finish it. But he said it was great.
Over all. I’ll be back. I want to try and take down one of those queso covered footballs myself. (Kind of a long winded Unilocal review for someone with asthma, right?)

So, let me first say that I only review restaurants that I’ve been to more than once. But if I’ve been to a place a few times and the experience is consistently great it’s absolutely worth my time to write a review. El Original Tx Mx is great! Great drink specials and I recommend the house margarita, great food, and great atmosphere and wait staff (ask for Brooke!). Do yourself a favor and relax here with some margaritas, guac and a few tacos.

I don’t like to give bad press, and really try hard to always find something good to say about a business I’ve visited, but unfortunately I really don’t have anything kind to say about my recent experience at El Original Tex-​Mex. I went there a few nights ago with my girlfriend and another couple friends to try it out as we live right down the street. We were all severely disappointed.
To start out with, the strawberry frozen margarita I ordered was terrible. There was literally no taste to it. It was given to me without salt around the rim of the glass too. Now, I didn’t ASK for salt, but that’s the norm whenever getting a frozen margarita, at least in our experience. My girlfriend ordered a red sangria, which wasn’t much better. It was basically red wine on ice with a few pieces of chopped up apple tossed in.
Their complimentary chips & salsa were frankly the worst I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot. The chips were so salty that, in order to eat them, you had to scrape off a layer of salt. The salsa was too liquidy to get to stay on your chip. When I did get a taste of it I wish I hadn’t, as it wasn’t good.
Our friends, who happened to be from New Mexico, ordered chicken fajitas and beef tamales which we all shared. They were better than the chips and salsa, which isn’t saying much. The best thing about them was the rice and beans.
El Original TX MX is a new’ish restaurant that opened a few months ago. It’s associated with the Skyline Hotel, which I suppose the majority of their customers come from. As a seasoned traveler, I very rarely eat at a hotel restaurant unless I’m pressed for time and no other options are available. Why? Because, unless it’s a 5-​Star hotel, the food is usually pretty bland, as their focus is on your hotel room, not the dining room. I wish these guys the best of luck, but they’re gonna need a lot of it to get this place up to par, especially given the plethora of other delicious options surrounding them n Hell’s Kitchen.
Their location used to be Meemo Tapas Sports Bar, which only lasted two years. Before that it was Pj Bricks, which didn’t last much longer. I visited both and they were just as bad as El Original. I don’t know if the location is cursed, or just has a bad kitchen, but I warn my fellow Unilocalers to steer clear of this place.

Apparently they have a new chef. Well hats off, chef. I’m a Texan so I’m typically pretty hard to please when it comes to Tex mex! El O did a fantastic job on my favorite dishes! Queso, fajitas and drinks. Can’t go wrong here.
Food came out quickly, was hot and delicious. The restaurant itself is large, spacious and not the typical crammed, noisy NYC restaurant we’ve all come to put up with.
I’ll definitely be back and bringing friends with me.
Highly recommended with enthusiasm!

The food at El Original is okay.
You can get a pretty decent queso, but the portions are definitely too small to share.
The service was completely lacking.
You would think on a slow friday night when the restaurant is 75% empty, a waitress would be able to greet the table and take the drink order in a timely manner. After about 10 minutes of sitting, the host came over to ask us if we’d like to start with some water… we weren’t even sure if we had a waitress.
Our whole meal consisted of mainly looking for the waitress, waiting for the waitress, asking for the waitress, and a few minutes in between of enjoying our food, and enjoying our drinks.
At one point we did see the waitress, all the way in the back… eating her dinner. we tried to catch her attention. Then we watched her walk over to the host stand, and chat with the host for a bit… we tried to catch her attention… then we watched her walk back over to her dinner and continue eating.
We were able to finally order our second round of drinks, along with more chips and salsa.
Our second round of drinks was frozen margaritas… that come out of a frozen margarita machine.
The waitress went to the back to get our chips and salsa, and then stood at the bar, with the chips and salsa, waiting for the bartender, who disappeared… we watched her just stand at the empty bar, with our food for minutes… while we had nothing to eat or drink at our table…
Honestly, it was kind of absurd how terrible the waitstaff was. It’s not that they were understaffed. There were plenty of plaid clad staff walking around… it’s just that nobody seemed to care…

I’m not a fan of no longer being able to order queso and enchiladas until after 3 pm. :(I often abandon my favorite restaurant now.

I usually don’t write reviews but this place definitely deserve it. So here it is…
Wonderfully flavorful food, great atmosphere
Service was wonderful. Food was very flavorful, there were 4 of us and we all agreed this was a must return to spot. The menu is extremely gluten free friendly, with everything labeled as such (I have celiac and will return with confidence). The atmosphere is, in my eyes, perfect. The dinning room is huge, making the noise level just right, and very comfortable in the spacing between tables. I would recommend reservations for large groups. I’m excited to have found this gem and can’t wait to go back!!!
PS Brunch menu is amazing!

Mediocrity at its, well… averageist. I love Tex Mex, and my wife and I were able to go on a late night date on a Thursday so I chose El Original to try. We arrived around 10:30p and received a late night menu, not the full menu I saw published online, but fine they close @ 1am. Service was sub par for a place that had maybe 20 people in and can sit 140. Nothing I can exactly put my finger on, but it just seemed inattentive and then we waited quite a while to see our server again to request a check. Which was ridiculous! All told it was a $ 100 date night, that should have been more like $ 60. Bullet list to follow because I like lists.
— Slow service
— Margaritas quite meh for the price
— Bones in my shredded chicken tacos
— Bland watery tacos
— The rice and beans were quite good
— Chips and salsa were good as well

When they first opened they were great, slowly it’s gotten poorer and poorer.
The launch menu was fantastic, then they pared it down — which i get. However the last time I was there, the menu has been slashed significantly.
The Queso USED to be great, but something changed recently and it’s not nearly as good, and my favorite item on the menu the Carne Guisada is just gone now.
The ambiance is great, and I used to love this place, I live nearby and loved popping in. But now it’s slowly becoming a shadow of it’s former self (and it hasn’t even been open that long!)

My wife & I have been for brunch and dinner. We were blown away, especially considering what this place used to be!
The food & service is excellent. I probably place too much value on the quality of a joint’s beans, but they nailed it — slow cooked, with fresh jalapeños. It’s this kind of detail that is easily overlooked.
A big reason reason for the 5 stars is for their dedication to great local beer. I don’t mean the stuff you find everywhere with large distribution deals (not mentioning names), but the self-​distributing small nyc breweries, like Braven, Finback and Singlecut. Yes, I’m a beer-​nut, but this is beer you may not even find at your snootiest beer bar.
Way to go guys — see you soon!

I would recommend this as a good place for drinks and appetizers/​chips and guac; not so much for a full meal of dinner/​dessert. The beer list was good (more than just Corona and Dos Equis, as is too common in Mexican restaurants), and the drinks were interesting; in particular the Poblanita (a margarita made with poblano peppers). It was unique and inventive, a great mix of booze, ingredients and spices… I can only describe it as like drinking a nice, cool glass of salsa, which a couple of my friends thought sounded disgusting, but come on… who hasn’t wanted to just skip the chips and pour some good salsa right down their gullet?
Speaking of chips… the chips and guac were great, and they were quite generous with the extra chips (they did charge us for 1 $ 4 «extra chips» but, well… we must have plowed through about 4 of them, so that seemed plenty reasonable to me). The meal was a bit disappointing, however — I had the sour cream enchiladas, which seemed dry (what did you do with that sour cream, anyway?) and uninspired — it lacked any spice, and the spanish rice was badly overcooked. Everyone in my group seemed to find their meal acceptable at best.
I was also quite disappointed with the Sopapillas. I absolutely fell in love with these when I spent a couple of weeks in New Mexico many moons ago… think carnival fried dough, but drizzled with honey along with powdered sugar. They were omnipresent as a desert option in Santa Fe, and I loved them so hard, it was painful to never find them back home, so it was a no-​brainer that I was trying these. But they were fancied up… like a poor effort to turn a simple, comfort dessert into a fancy Iron Chef output. They were small, with some weird spiced honey on them. I mean, just fry some dough and put a plastic squeeze bottle of honey on the table like God — er, I mean Kokopelli — intended.

The short of it = this place is super disappointing and overpriced… and portions are small. IMHO, just avoid.
I really wanted this place to shine b/​c TexMex is one of my favorite cuisines. In fact, when I heard this place was opening up, I actually got excited about the notion of good TexMex finally coming to NYC. On the surface, this place should be magnificent – the location is great and the interior of the restaurant is spacious and inviting. I just wish the food was as inviting as the décor and atmosphere… but it’s just disappointing all around.
As I’m reading other Unilocal!reviews of this place, I see that there’s a trend. Seems like there’s a consensus that the nachos are small and overpriced… the El Original Queso is ridiculously small for the $ 11 price point… the puffy tacos are greasy, tough, and miserably bad… the chili con queso tostada is a joke (just a single tortilla dipped in cheese should NOT drive the price point of the combo meals to $ 20+)…
My prediction = This place will close without some serious help.
Note that the best part of this place is the cute manager. I really hope he reads every one of these Unilocal!reviews and initiates some major changes…
Oh, and one last thing: Many of the pics on here are stock pics from the restaurant. Look for real pics from diners who’ve been to the restaurant.

The guacamole is way too acidic. It might need a lot less lime in it.
Below average food for Tex Mex and way overpriced, but considering the neighborhood, the price points probably have to be higher to cover the rent.
The place feels like a Chili’s, so if you’re into that type of vibe and food then this is your spot. Unfortunately for me, I am not into it at all, especially not for the prices.

I started to feel really strange halfway through my meal and had to stop eating it because my stomach was so full of gas. My friend wanted a picture of us together so I stood up for a moment to take it. That’s when I rushed to the bathroom.
I threw up EVERYTHING. It took three hurls to get it all out and let me tell you, that spicy margarita is the LAST thing you want coming back around. I was rinsing my mouth with water when my bowels seized up. Back to the toilet! Here’s some technical info: That part was NORMAL but my body was kicking everything out and FAST. To get graphic, I didn’t have diarrhea, which would imply I’d eaten food earlier that did this to me (GOOGLE IT), but I did have a wee bit of diarrhea the following morning thanks to lingering food poisoning.
And here’s the real kicker: I told the manager what had happened. He implied that because I hadn’t eaten meat there’s no way it could have been food poisoning. This guy runs a restaurant and doesn’t know how food poisoning works! He sat at the bar sipping whiskey and I had to ask our waiter to move so I could sit and continue speaking to the manager because I had the shakes. Nobody seemed to care! Then I had to actually ASK the manager to comp my meal because he was basically just telling me that it might not have been the food.
He comped my entrée but not my two drinks — the drinks that were no longer even inside of me because someone scratched their ass crack before handling my food.
I just wanted OUT so I paid $ 30 for two cocktails and $ 20 for the cab I had to take home since I was worried I’d pass out on the subway.
And for the record, everything else I’d eaten that day was food I had at home, all of which was the SAME food I’d eaten without problem the day before.

I along with other reviewers are giving a low rating to El Original that it deserves, even though I so badly want to rate it higher. I love Tex Mex, and I love the Homesick Texan (I own the book). But does she really think that the food and experience here is befitting of her reputation? She needs to visit La Condesa in Austin, or Abuelo’s in Abilene, or Rosario’s in San Antonio — then come back and create that here. It’s a beautiful space in a trendy neighborhood with so much potential — and Tex Mex is the cuisine of the moment in NYC — but the food quality is going to have to be higher in a neighborhood with great Mexican like Hell’s Kitchen and Ariba Ariba.
The service here always feels chaotic to me – both times I’ve had to wait a while before a server comes to my table, and especially the chips and salsa. This time, I waited over 7 to 8 minutes for a server to arrive at the table. Several servers and bartenders would pass by the table, and it seemed that no one knew we were there or even stopped to say, «have you been helped?» Once our server became aware that we were waiting, he was accommodating, attentive and efficient. But it was all the chaos and people shuffling around without being attentive up to that point that left a bad first impression.
We did enjoy the chicken fajitas a great deal — and the meat is generous and served sizzling in a skillet (kudos). The queso here is just ok – why can’t Tex Mex in NYC just serve delicious basic white queso like they do in Texas? Here it tastes like cheese from the nacho stand at the Yankees game or your local 7 Eleven. For better queso, head to Javelina where it may even be better than Texas.
I also do like the puffy tacos here, and the tortillas weren’t bad. I love the Mezcal drink with ginger beer.
There are reasons to like El Original — its space for sure — but the food quality has got to be higher if a famous chef is going to attach her name to it. I’m expecting something more, and El Original still hasn’t delivered it after two tries. I’m hoping it will.

The review in New York Magazine promised a mouth watering menu full of exciting flavours. The reality — at least for the four dished we tried — was tasteless textureless stodge that would have been more at home on an airplane than a decent restaurant (and even then not very impressive). The cocktails were good though, and our server was friendly despite the obvious stress of opening weekend and having to keep reporting to us — and many other tables — that the food was «coming soon» after a 2 hour wait. I can put the chaos down to teething problems… but don’t see any excuse for the quality of the food.
On rereading the «article» in New York Magazine it seemed the journalist hadn’t actually eaten here but was simply reporting on what was coming. with a report based presumably on the restaurant’s own advertising. Last time I pay attention to NY Magazine.

First evening open — 4÷1÷15!
Replacing the former Meemo space, El Original seeks to bring the first taste of *authentic* TexMex to NYC.
They have the first thing right — it’s a huge space, reminiscent of Texas more than the usual narrow New York restaurant spaces. The décor is just kitschy enough to tell you where you are, but not so much it distracts.
The menu is a solid tribute to Texas… it mentions Lady Bird, for God’s sake! The combination plates are true to Tex Mex style, as are the deserts and the bean-​less chili! Oh, and chicken fried steak FTW. I can’t explain what it is, but I know I grew up eating it at Grandy’s! The menu also explains common ingredients for the uninitiated. Apps are $ 7 – 15 and entrees are $ 15 – 25.
Drinks are boozy and tequila leaning. $ 10 – 13.
Come check it out! Right now they are open for dinner only, but plan to open for lunch soon.