El Centinela

Horrible service, not too good food. Just a bad experience. The food was soggy and gave you a stomach ache, kids food was undercooked, the waitress was rude and rarely checked on you. We will definitely never be back!

I absolutely love this place! My boyfriend and I come here often, sometimes even 3 days in a row. The servers are always so friendly. The owner Kelvin is great! He will come and check in on our table. I love the environment, without a doubt the best place to go after a long day of work. Margaritas are great, food is great and the service is even better! We have tried the other Mexican resturant across the street and it just didn’t win us over. This is the best place to be. Great prices! All around this is my «go to» place.

I love this restaurant. The chicken Chimichangas are the best! The prices are fantastic and the drinks are wonderful. Even the rice is light and fluffy. The salsa is authentic with the perfect amount of pepper and the chips are fresh and warm. My husband and I go once a week. It is by far the best Mexican food around.

Our go to place for Mexican food that is in the Kroger shopping center. Everything that I have tried has been great. Not a bad meal yet. The drinks are reasonably priced and there is a bar also. You can get ½ orders on some items. Authentic Mexican comfort food.

I bit into a rock that was in my fajitas, and the waiter never smiled once the whole time we were there. I’ve been going there for a while and have noticed them going from good food and salsa down to watered down salsa and okay food. The salsa is so watered down that when you dip a chip in it, you’re only wetting the chip with water — not enough salsa to stick and no salsa taste. On my last visit, I bit into a rock. This was my first rock experience. They are fortunate that it did not break my tooth. I get another rock in my food, I will sue — that is — if I come back.

Not sure how this place has stayed open or how anyone has given this more than one star. Service is horrendous and the food is never fresh. Chips cold and stale. Salsa tastes like tomato paste. Been here twice and the same olé same olé. Never going back.

We have been coming here for a while now and the service has declined ever since. After taking our order, we didn’t see our server again until we were ready for the check. The manager brought us our food and refilled our drinks. The food is above average, and destroys the local competitor.

Love this place! Great food, great people and even better drinks! Kelvin and Stacey are awesome servers!

This is my favorite restaurant in the area. (Braselton location) The food is delicious and served fast. It looks small on the outside, but there’s actually a lot of room inside. The parking lot is another story though. Its hard to find parking because of the other businesses and it is a busy restaurant. It is so worth it though! I rarely have to wait in line for a seat. If I do its just for a minute or two. No big deal. The Fajitas are so delicious! It has a nice marinade or fajita sauce. It comes with tortillas, rice and beans and a «salad» with sour cream. The salad is just fresh tomato slice, avocado slices and a tomato/​cilantro mix. It’s all so good. My dad gets the California burrito, I believe it is called. He’s always torn between that or the steak/​shrimp fajitas. The free chips and salsa is always so fresh! We love it when the jalapeños they use are nice and spicy! Try the frozen margaritas! They do not skimp on the alcohol. They really do them good here. Staff is friendly and fast. They are always dishing great customer service!

The dining room was clean and the wait staff were attentive. Unfortunately that will only get a second star from me. The food here was nothing special. I’ve certainly had better Mexican food. I ordered the lunch el texano. The chicken was tough. The sauce was uninspired. The «guacamole salad» was shredded lettuce with some guacamole dumped on top. My first impression of the salad was sarcasm. It was so inept that I had to laugh at it. The rice was bland and boring. I ended up using my friends flour tortillas to mix it all up with some taco sauce in makeshift fajitas in a desperate attempt to create something worth the expense. Maybe I just chose wrong. Maybe there was someone new in the kitchen. I don’t know where it went wrong but it definitely did. I didn’t check out the restroom but I certainly needed one shortly thereafter. The people I was with love this restaurant over the others in the area. There is a better one right across the street and I’ll be going back there from now on. I can forgive a bland meal and try again with a different dish. However I only need to learn once when a kitchen causes me abdominal distress. I won’t be returning.

Found this place on help and like others the 32oz beer for $ 3.99 can’t be beat! Food was good and salsa too. Chips were great. Service was ok but we came in between lunch and dinner so they were busy getting things ready for next shift. Definitely worth the visit, I will be back. Oh and the freshest juiciest limes I have ever had, made my sis Equis that much better.

My whole family LOVES going to El Centinela — the 5 of us have ordered a variety of items from the menu! The apps are great, the nachos, tacos, burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, and VERY good skinny margaritas, made from scratch, right in front of you with fresh fruit! The 32 oz beer specials @ $ 3.99 can’t be beat! We eat here at least once a week and find the service top notch! our family of 5 loves it! — Jose is the best bartender there too, makes an excellent Margarita! MLJx5

Great food and prices. We are regulars and mostly go on weekends. A few times during the week the food/​service was off, but it is rare. The manager that is there in the weekend runs a great crew and it is always awesome!

Well these folks certainly run the gamut in review extremes. I was nervous about coming here, but my daughter wanted Mexican food, so we decided to jump in. It’s a great place to stop for dinner after our weekly Kroger & BlocknBlade Butcher shop trip, so we were hoping the 1* review was not going to be the norm.
I have to say, we were quite pleased with just about everything. My daughter ordered the kids nacho plate so she could fit in dessert as well (adult entrees are overwhelming to her, despite her voracious appetite). We munched on the house tortilla chips and salsa — nothing to write home about, but decent. I added salt & pepper to give it a flavor other than cilantro. I did like that it had just a little bit of heat without being overwhelming. The chips are thicker than I like for fresh baked, but they’ll do.
I had my mind sent on ordering one of two things, but thought to ask the waitress what she recommended. She asked a couple of questions to get an angle on my taste leanings, then recommended a dish (I can’t remember the name — I’ll try to come back and update once I remember) that had grilled chicken & shrimp topped with cheese and served with rice & salad. Oh, my was it delicious! I was a bit nervous, as I don’t typically like shredded cheese, but it was served with cheese SAUCE on top of the meat (and onion) mixture. That meant that once I started moving the meat around, that charred goodness — all those flavor bits — were mixed into the cheese sauce. It was so delicious, even my daughter ate a few bites — after she’d finished her plate!
The sweet tea wasn’t great, but it’ll do in a pinch. The service was disappointing. The young lady helping us was kind and polite and pleasant, but she’d disappear far longer than necessary. And she brought the ticket without asking if we wanted dessert — after I’d been sitting with my plate off to the side for at least 15 minutes. She also didn’t give me a single refill on my drink. That garnered her a mere 15% tip — which is a shame. That food was so good I was ready to tip far more.
Prices are also very reasonable — I didn’t see a single thing on the menu that had a price I was concerned about. This is definitely going to fit right into our normal rotation!
On the downside: this is NOT authentic Mexican food, y’all! IT says right on their description, «Tex Mex.» The food is full-​on flavor, cooked well, bright and colorful. It is absolutely delicious. But it is not ‘authentic.’ You want authentic, find a carnicería & eat at their in-​house eatery. It won’t be a place you’ll love to go sit & eat, but the food & flavors will be authentic.
However, if you want a casual dining restaurant with table service and pretty darn good food, this place is definitely for you.

1 star because I can’t go lower. This is the 3^rd time we have tried this restaurant and also will be our last. The first time, the food was only lukewarm and tasteless. The second time we practically had to go in search of our server to get refills on our drinks as they delivered the food and never came back to our table, except of course to deliver the check. After that time, we swore we’d never be back. Our daughter and her boyfriend love this place though, so tonight we thought we’d try it once more. We had a large party so didn’t mind waiting for a table for 30 minutes, but when they finally sat us, they split us into 2 tables on opposite sides of the restaurant and in 2 different rooms. That was the last straw so we left. Never ever going back here again.

If you haven’t been to El Centinela you have certainly missed out on the most delicious and authentic Mexican food. Even my grandchildren love going to this restaurant and clearing their plates. Oh, let’s not forget the best margarita in town. When you go, say hello to Jose the manager extraordinaire!!!