El Jinete Mexican Restaurant

Excellent staff training. Very hospitable. Attentive to detail and they anticipate your needs. The reason for the 3 stars is because their food quality did not taste fresh nor great. In other words, it's very inconsistent. I ordered mixed fajitas and the steak was not fresh at all. I ate it because I was starving but it wasn't something to pay more than $15 for. By curiosity, I tried one of my family member's steak... it was a whole lot better than mine. Was that steak worth the price, too? No. Very cheap quality. It cannot be justified with, "you-get-what-you-pay-for." You pay an arm and a leg for almost expired meat -burned in a skillet at a small, outdated, strip mall restaurant that it is out of coffee liqueur, Kahlua? Or my favorite, we order a kid's cheeseburger, only to be notified at the end of waiting for our meals, that they're out of buns? Could of told us that earlier to switch it for something else.

I’ve been coming here for 20+ years but I haven’t been in the last five years. I was craving tacos something simple late afternoon meal. Service was interesting where the hostess ask me how many and I said I’m just gonna sit at the bar. She then became our bartender and waitress even though there was a person behind the bar talking to someone. I said hello to her and she acknowledged me but never served us. The hostess that took our order went back to the hostess stand, when we needed something we had to look around for her. She would see us looking for her and come right away. She did a great job serving us but just odd that the other person behind the bar never addressed us or asked if we needed anything. Maybe it was shift change time because it was late afternoon? The chips and salsa show up, the salsa was very good, glad to see that hasn’t changed. A smooth tomatoey base. You can taste the garlic and cilantro. But the chips have changed, a little thicker - which I don’t like because they tend to jab and pierce the roof of my mouth. Unfortunately the first batch was stale so I sent them back, next batch was fine. I ordered two beef hardshell tacos. I was a little disappointed with the chopped cheap lettuce, it was iceberg. The taco itself was delicious, crunchy shell good flavored meat and cheese, perfect. No problems there at all, totally satisfied my craving. My girlfriend ordered the chicken soup. If you’ve never had chicken soup in a Mexican restaurant try it. It’s the best chicken soup I’ve ever had. I normally would never order things like chicken soup in a restaurant. To me it’s one of those things like meatloaf your mom makes on Sunday you don’t buy that from a restaurant. But I tried it once years ago and loved it, this place still rock ‘n’ roll‘s their chicken soup is phenomenal! A really good chicken broth base and the chicken meat is not dry good flavor and tender. The cilantro flavors are there as well. Then the touch of fresh avocado just makes it. Four stars instead of three because they still had great service and the food was still really good despite first batch of stale chips and weird service. Handicap accessible. Open spaces, easy access in and around the restaurant. Lots of parking out front. Located in a shopping center with a Movie Tavern so when the movies are going the parking lot can get crowded. Another thing to consider is to come here before or after your movie and have a good Mexican meal verses eating in the theater - just a personal thing I don’t like eating my food in a dark theater where I can’t tell if it’s cooked all the way etc. Ive been served raw chicken wings there but that’s a review for another day.😉