On The Border Mexican Grill & Cantina

Last night I was here with a date and it was awful. The food came out cold. The waiter never stopped by the table to check on us so after being without a refill of our drinks for 15 minutes I finally got up and tracked him down. Speaking of drinks it doesn’t say the price on the drink menu. Unsurprisingly it’s because they were really expensive when the bill came. Next time I want Mexican I’ll just go to Taco Bell.

HORRIBLE. The service was slow, went for dinner on Jan 17, arrived at 435, didn’t get served until 530. No follow up, no explanation, no reappearance of the waiter. Drink refill took 25 minutes. And the staff seemed to be more interested in the back room for what seems to be a staff dinner/​party, BTW brought in from outside from an Italian restaurant (i was and witnessed the delivery). this is definitely a sign of poor management. A good manager does not allow this to happen and makes sure that the wait staff takes care of their cllents. The waiter was pleasant but never offered any reason as to why the food took SOOO long nor any reason for any of the many gaps in service. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR; GO UP THE ROAD ON ROUTE 46 E TO CHILIS. BETTER SERVICE, NO BS. I have been a client for a while on on the border but no longer.

Went for lunch .food once again has gone downhill… cold…unappetizing the Hatch Chile chicken enchiladas with a putrid green sauce?! No manager in site to talk to… used to be a great place… better choice Jose Tejas

Went here again (only because Olive Garden had a 25 minute wait) and the service was not rushed like last time. Our server gave us ample time from when he brought out our drinks to when he took our orders and then brought the orders out. A lot of the servers seem apathetic here for some reason though. Our server was not friendly but he did do everything we asked so I can’t really complain. It would be nice though for the servers to seem more friendly; even if it is just superficial. I mean if you’re going to be mean, then just turn the establishment into a take-​out joint because I don’t want to sit down and see mean faces when I am eating and certainly when I am giving you my money.
I ordered almost the same things as the last time and I still feel the food is just average. This time when we went, the place was packed.
I’m just not impressed with this place even though I am a critical but forgiving person.
The sizzling apple crisp I had for dessert was pathetic. Where were the damn apples?

I used to like this place much more but they recently changed their menu and you cannot get Carne Asada anymore. So I was really disappointed in my last visit, The food was salty and I wasn’t able to get what «my usual» was. My server was great!!! Which is an improvement from my previous visit where I had to wait too long for my server to come to our table.

Not as bad as the bad reviews but not as good as the good ones. Just bland. Bartender quickly serviced and made accurate beer recommendation. Didn’t even finish chips when most of order arrived. Manager brought last item steaming. When living in the southwest, I’ve eaten at mamacita-​cooked holes-​in-​the-​wall that are literally on-​the-​border. Don’t understand why someone would eat here.

Great Tex Mex. It’s not Mexican.
El Patron meal is the bomb. Don’t order anything else if you’re really hungry.
Bottomless nachos are crazy fresh. Great with some salt and pepper.
They have a party room for over 15. It was great service.
Bathroom clean.
Parking lot available.
Would return.

From Cali and been to on the border before and love it but THIS LOCATION IS Terrible at their service! They took over an hour and still didn’t get our food! So we got up to leave and they tried to convince us. So we told them to get our food to go and still the order was wrong and we were missing a whole meal and side orders, tortillas, ect. Terrible service and the manager wasn’t very nice.

They should power wash the men’s room. I really hate to think how the kitchen must look. Food’s not bad, salsas too hot chips greasy it’s a chain restaurant.

I ate here tonight and the drinks were good… food tasted okay. Nothing special. I love Mexican food and certainly have had WAY better. But now I feel incredibly sick.
Our waitress also ignored us for the most part and I heard her blatantly be rude to another table near us. I don’t normally say this but I don’t think I’ll be back.

Better than average experience at this better than average chain Tex-​Mex.
We’ve been going to OtB for years. Some part of me feels like I should not be saying it out loud, because I have mean friends. However, in recognition that I’m not comparing it to «authentic» Mexican or Tex-​Mex, I have to put myself in the «fan» category for this chain.
Experience at this location has been spotty. The previous time we went here, our food took WAY too long and the order was messed up, etc. Basically, textbook calamity.
We went last night, armed with a free queso coupon and an appetite for all-​you-​can-​eat chips and salsa. I LOVE the salsa at OtB. It’s not chunky, but nicely blended and you can get a good amount on the chip. The queso is usually good, but I’m sure it’s Velveeta-​based, so queso snobs will not be impressed.
The restaurant was pretty lightly populated, no surprised for a summer Sunday at 9 PM. We were seated and greeted quickly, chips and salsa at the ready. Check! We ALWAYS order the same meal — split the fajitas, perfect for two — so we ordered everything at once. I got a little wild and opted for a watermelon margarita, frozen. (Haters, commence hating.) We were all set within 5 minutes of walking in. Check!
Our items came fast and furious, just like we like. The margarita was a winner! We inhaled the queso, and before we were even done with that, our fajita order arrived, sizzling. Check, check and check!
Our server was attentive and efficient. Only observation, and not even a ding, is that she didn’t bring me a water alongside my margarita, but no biggie. We stuffed ourselves, paid the check and were out in under an hour. CHECK!
This excellent OtB experience was out of the ordinary, and therefore I can’t give the place more than 4 stars, even though we were completely satisfied. I have to factor in the past 2-​star and 3-​star experiences in this same location that I haven’t reviewed.
However, we’ll be back.

I went here with my gf the other night for the first time. The frozen margaritas and food were OK but the food was incredibly and unnecessarily salty, especially the black beans, beef taco filling, queso and chips. I could never understand why some restaurants use salty prepackaged tortilla chips which only adds to the other food’s saltiness. As a Mexican Chef myself, I know that excessive salt is not the key to solving food’s blandness, instead the solution is careful execution of spices.
As far as the drinks, we ordered the extra shot of (low grade) tequila for $ 1.59 extra, which when poured into the margarita still made a somewhat weak drink.
I recommend Chevy’s if you’re looking for good margaritas and fair Mexican food. There is much better Mexican food out there in NJ but it’s BYOB.

I used to come here at least once a month with either my family or friends. Lately, this location has been very disappointing.
Getting seated itself is a process. While I understand that this location is very busy on certain days, the wait times are just not like they used to be. I remember waiting about an hour for a table of 4. Last time I went the wait for the same day and party size was over 2 hours. Even on a slow night, getting servers to pay attention to your table has slowly become difficult.
In terms of food, the quality has seemed to decrease. While not all menu items are bad, a few of my favorite definitely have a different taste to them.
For me, this is now a place that is just convenient instead of a quality restaurant. Very sad, and I really do hope it changes, since I think this place has great potential.

Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of On the Border in general. Actually my entire family is. I sometimes just get cravings for it because I’ve always loved the food. Ever since this location opened up years ago, my family has given it plenty of business and we’ve always been happy customers. My visit this time was just alright though. We didn’t think it was their best, definitely had better in the past.
The free chips & salsa you get when you first sit down is awesome. The chips were freshly made and still warm, that’s the best. The salsa is actually really good quality, has a nice kick to it. The best part is, they’ll refill both the chips and salsa for free. Pretty sweet!
For appetizers we stuck with our go to order, the bowl of queso. I don’t care how «fake» this cheese is, its damn good and you know it. Theres never any cheese left in our bowl, we all love it. We also ordered the beef empanadas, ehhhhhhh they were kinda not that great. They seemed to be somewhat old or had been sitting out for a while. They didn’t have the fresh taste that you would expect but at the same time they weren’t bad, we still ate them.
I ordered the Enchiladas Suizas which are described on the menu as, «three enchiladas filled with slow-​cooked pulled chicken and cheese with freshly made tomatillo cream sauce and melted jack cheese». I substituted the tomatillo cream sauce with sour cream sauce. They were alright, I didn’t really taste much cheese in them and they were also somewhat skimpy. I felt like the bulks of my bites were just the tortilla with no a lot of chicken. This could have been a one off though because this is usually my go to order and I usually love it.
My sister got the Baja dish, which was a tempura fried avocado stuffed with chicken & cheese, with a chicken enchilada. I personally tasted the fried avocado and it was gross. My sister also agreed. Definitely skip over this… its just not good.
My mom went with the classic chicken burrito and she liked it. She said it was good but did notice that the size of the burrito itself has decreased over time.
Overall my experience this time around was just alright, some highs and some lows. The service was good though and the prices are reasonable. I’ll still come back.

Tasty and surprisingly spicy Hatch Chili Enchiladas were well seasoned and delicious. The staff were friendly and quick to check if we needed refills on drinks and chips; seems like there’ve been some welcome changes in management recently that’s starting to pay off.
Do yourself a favor and try the sopapillas for desert; sweet crispy pastries served with chocolate dipping sauce and honey goodness!

Horrible service, bad bad food
Stay hungry than going to this place to waste time and money !!!

On Father’s Day was finally able to get my whole gang together which is a feat in itself. We decided to go there and have a nice meal together before my son went to work. It was early afternoon around 2:30. We did not have to wait to be seated.
As everyone else said the Chips and Salsa are good unfortunately we had way to much time to enjoy them. When we ordered our food we explained that my son had to leave by 3:45.
There were 6 of us at the table and we ordered 4 Tortilla soups and an appetizer to start. While we waited we had plenty of time to enjoy the chips & salsa some more .I could not understand waiting for soup, but ok let’s imagine soup takes a long time. When the soup came out it was watery and barely warm. I guess if we wanted it hot it may have taken longer. By the time we realized the soup was not hot we could not find a server to come over so my group being hungry they ate it anyway. When we saw the waitress we let her know about the soup. She apologized and said we should have told her and she would have taken care of it. When she said that I wanted to say «well next time I will go in the kitchen and look for you because I did not see you anywhere on the floor» but what I really said was not to worry they ate it anyway.
So it is now about an hour and my son still has not received his meal .I reminded the Waitress again (this was the 3^rd time I made mention of it to her). 5 minutes before my son had to leave the food came out. Well at least for the 5 other people. His food was still not out. I asked the waitress for the 4^th time about his meal. It finally came out, but we had to have it in a to go container because he had to leave.
Now back to the other 5 meals. The funny thing about at a place like this is the food is simple and usually comes out rather quickly. That was not so in this place, but usually if you have to wait a long time you know it is going to be fresh and hot. Well again that was not the case. The food was cold. This time it was colder than the soup. So my question is if the food is prepared fresh and I had to wait a long time, then how did it get cold? Also you know those nice pictures in the menu that make you want to try a new dish… I can promise you that in this case the food looks nothing like the picture.
This time I was able to speak to the waitress right away .She said she would send the Manager over.5 minutes went by. no one came…10 minutes went by no one came. The waitress call the manager 3 times. The last time we heard her on the microphones they wear almost begging the manager to please come to our table. Finally she came over, but I am not sure she could have come off any less concerned about our issues.
So all in all if I was looking for a good meal on father’s day it was not going to be found here. Thank goodness for great company otherwise it would have completely ruined my day.
On the plus side our waitress did everything she could do, but she did not seem to be getting any help.
After I posted my review I read many of the others for this location and realized It seems to be a management issue. Even the responses from on the border are very cold and generic. BTW I sent an email to their customer relations and still have not heard back other then an automated type of response. Just an FYI there is much better Tex Mex in the area and the service is super fast.

Crappy, pre-​frozen, reheated «Mexican». The prices and the food are decent enough, the margaritas are cold, and the service is usually pretty friendly. I don’t come here looking for authenticity, I come here because there are free chips and margaritas the size of your head. I prefer OTB to the intolerable train wreck that is Chevy’s any day.

Reposted in error

Decent text mex. Friendly waitstaff. Terrible leadership. When our order came out wrong and we requested a manager, she was polite upfront, but turned around and talked negatively about us over her headset. Too bad we could not call to complain because the person in charge was the problem.
If you do go, leave an extra tip for the servers/​bartenders that have to work with an ill-​fitted manager.