Mi Gran Mariachi

Saw an ad for this place in Coupon Clipper magazine. I had never heard of the place so decided to go. Turned out it was located close to Outback Steak House. This apparently is the third iteration. It was know, at first, as El Cuzcatleco, then was called Los Amigos and now Mi Gran Mariachi. I had been in as El Cuzcatleco and didn’t like that then. But the ad said Grand Opening, under new management. So went in and I ordered the cheese dip for a starter. It took about 25 minutes to get the cheese dip and after that long wait the cheese dip was sort of gritty, like the cheese had separated. It was just OK, I would not order it again. My wife ordered the taco salad with beef and I ordered the beef and chicken enchiladas. And there was another very long wait. The ad said Karoke — Fri. & Sat.; Mariachi — Sun. Great Entertainment. I asked my waitress where the mariachi band was and she looked at me like I was crazy and said they had no such thing so then I showed her the ad and she looked and looked at it. And finally she said that the Mariachi was only on Sunday. I told her that was true from the ad and that TODAY is Sunday. So she said she guess the band would be in around 9 pm, it was about 6 then. Actually I was glad that the band was NOT there. Later she came back and told me that it was no use my waiting as she found out that the band would not be in that night. So I asked her why not and she said well she spoke only English and the lady that knew about the band spoke only Spanish so she couldn’t figure out what happened. The meal took a while to arrive as I HAD told the waitress that we wanted to finish out appitizer before getting the entrees. The entrees were OK but nothing to return for. The refried beans were more like once fried beans. I asked my wife how the taco salad was and she said the lettuce was a little wilted. But the real struggle came when I went to use the coupon. I really wanted to get out of the place and asked the waitress for my bill and she had stapeled the coupon on the bill but she didn’t take anything off the bill. The coupon was for up to $ 7.95 on one entrée when you ordered another entrée of equal or greater value. I kept asking her where the discount was and she kept staring at the bill, starting to tell me something, then looking at the bill again, then looking at the coupon. She apparently thought for some reason that the coupon was good for $ 2 off but I couldn’t even see that reflected on the bill. So finally she and another lady were up at the register wildly pressing all these buttons on the screen of the computer, apparently a special restaurang program. I stood there for about 10 minutes as the both took turns pressing the buttons. I finally told them that it was not my intention to spend the rest of the night in the restaurant and I wanted to pay the bill and get out of there and that resulted in more frantic button pressing. So finally I told them again that I wanted to pay my bill and get out of there and was tired of their guessing as to how to ring it up. After some more consulting and them giving me at least one more incorrect bill they finally used a calculator and printed out the total and then subtracted $ 7.95. I would NEVER go back there no matter how hungry I was. El Charro is not that far away and their food is MUCH better and they know what they are doing. So apparently when the restaurant gets too bad of a reputation they change the name, claim new management and have another Grand Opening. And there were about 6 parties dining at the same time I was there. I would hate to have seen the service if the place had been busy.