Rita Cantina

The food was pretty bland, the beef in my street taco was over cooked, the menu was limited and the sewer in the women’s restroom was backing up all over the floor. We won’t be going back.

The menu offered a wide array of choices from street tacos (small) or a burrito (huge) to fit any appetite. The chips and salsa were good. Salsa was fresh and the chips were delicious.
For dinner, I opted for the street tacos. They were larger than the ones I’ve had at other places but these had too much (meat, lettuce, salsa, etc) inside. Also, the meat (beef, pork and bacon in each taco) was barely warm and the aioli drizzled on one of the tacos was just OK. There was an upcharge for the beans and rice which were served in separate tiny bowls which equated to about 2 tablespoons.
Perhaps it’s because it’s new is the reason the meal wasn’t great. Maybe I should have had the burrito or fajitas. I’m willing to try it again at some point, but not the street tacos.

My brother and i had dinner here the other night. Very friendly people, bar tender was on point with drinks and hooked us up with a few shots on her. Very good American Mexican food. They make there own sauces. O AND DONT FORFET THE TEQUILA BAR!
INFUSED TEQUILA SHOTS!

Had lunch on our road trip. Staff was awesome, basically had the bartender, waiter, and manager helping us with recommendations and answering questions. Guacamole dip was great, add the hot sauce. Shrimp taco was amazing, especially with the tequila lime sour cream drizzle. Definite thumbs up.

Short review: I’m going to be staying away from this restaurant for a long time right now. While the presentation of the building and the layout of the building is nice, the food that I received, including the appetizer itself was not worth the money that they were asking for. The only thing that could have made this visit worse is if the place was dirty, and that’s the only thing that’s holding me back from giving them my first 1 star rating.
Long review:
I’m not even sure how to start off this review to be honest, but like all my other reviews, I’m going to guide you through the experience that I had… piece by piece.
We originally were going to head to Red Lobster, but decided to not stay there as the wait time was about 30 minutes. We debated about where to go, and were about to head to Old Chicago when we looked across the street and saw Rita Cantina.
We decided to head over there and to give them a try.
When we arrived, we were greeted by the hostess and we were sat down immediately. The place is very visually appeasing when you first walk in, so that was a plus in our book. The thing that I noticed right after this though, was that they were playing 80’s music. Including Corey Hart — Sunglasses at night… which I never expected to hear in a place like this.
We sat down and our waitress asked us for our drinks. They carry Coca-​Cola products for future reference by the way. It took us about 2 minutes to get the drinks, which was great but times could differ as there wasn’t that many people inside the actual restaurant.
The waitress asked us if we would like any appetizers with our meal, and in doing so, she also had to look at the menu real quick to show what appetizers they actually offered. Red flag #1. She told us that we would be getting some tortillas with gravy on the side for our free appetizer, so we decided not to go with any other appetizers as we didn’t want to spoil the rest of our meal.
After looking through the menus for a while, we finally decided on what we were going to get. The two ladies I was with decided on chicken enchiladas and I decided to get their «Famous Fajitas».
The appetizer was brought out and you could tell that the tortillas were store bought, not homemade. The gravy also looked like your regular run of the mill store bought gravy as one other reviewer has pointed out.
I was about to try the tortillas and then immediately remember that persons review and was telling myself «I hope they weren’t right about this»… but, they were.
The tortillas were bland, and the gravy did taste like Heinz gravy. Red flag #2.
The meals were finally brought out, and I could hear the fajitas sizzling like crazy (Technically my red flag #3). The two ladies didn’t understand at first why I kept stirring up the mix immediately, but I told them it was because I knew that the cast iron was too hot and that it was going to burn the food.
As I was stirring the mixture of the fajita, I did notice the food starting to stick to the bottom of the cast iron. Dammit. I was correct in what I thought earlier, and a lot of the fajita mix actually started burning and blackening because of the cast iron. … Dammit.
I started to remove the burnt food and decided to put it in a pile on the side of the cast iron. Finally, I decided to start eating. Mind you, I chose steak as my meat for the fajitas. The steak itself was pink on the very inside, but most of it was well done and over cooked. I’m thinking that this is a combination of not only the cook, but because of the cast iron being so hot as well.
I made my first mix on the tortilla and took a bite and realized how happy I was that I mixed the refried beans and rice as the steak was absolutely awful. To the point that I didn’t even want to call it steak. I ate through the mixture on the tortilla though, and decided to have one more as I wanted to make sure what I was eating really was that bad.
It was still that bad.
I shared a piece of the steak with one of the ladies I was with and she almost had to spit it out as it was so terrible.
The manager walked by a little bit after I stopped eating and asked us how the food was. The ladies said that their chicken enchilada was pretty good, but before I could say anything myself, one of the ladies I was with said how awful the fajitas was. The manager immediately said he «Knew what they did wrong» and was sorry about it.
We got the bill, and the item was not comped. So we had to talk to the waitress and she talked to the manager. The manager silently removed the item from the bill, and the waitress was the one who actually apologized after that, not the manager. We didn’t see him for the rest of the time that we were there.
I’m uploading pictures right now as I write this review to hopefully give you a better idea of what you can expect.

Went for supper at rita’s. The drinks were good. But the service and the food were OK at best. We order three meals from the menu. 1 of them the steak fajitas. The steak was barely above blue rare. And after seeing a dozen order of fajitas come out to other tables sizzling. Ours was not. Server forgot the side of beans and dropped the prepacked setup. The second setup was brought out but was frozen shut. And the third setup was enough for 1 fajita. Never did get the beans. The rest of the food was bland and it did not have the texmex flavors. When the server returned which was at the end of the meal. She got the manager which took another 15 min. He did take care of the check which was more then we expected. Over all if they learn to do things right it could be a good place but they have a long way to go.

Went to try the «hottest» new place in town. It’s Kearney, so naturally there is a lot of real exciting places to chow.
The way they redid this building and the interior looks great. After that, I don’t suppose I have a lot of great things to say about what’s going down here. It’s obviously TexMex, so naturally you can’t go in thinking you’re going to get the best street tacos of your life. Those are a few blocks down the street in the sketchy trailer and actually delicious and dirt cheap.
But I digress. This place is no bueno mister? Can we just call that Spanglish since this place is TexMex? Well, the food is okay at best. It’s generic TexMex although you can tell they tried really hard to make it seem like some kind of fancy fusion TexMex you’d find in Vegas or Denver or a place that is actually good at this kind of thing. And naturally, this leads to ridiculous prices. $ 4 – 5 for a street taco… SAY WHAT?! Burritos at $ 14, Nachos at $ 12, Fajitas at $ 18+!? Whooaaaa there. No thank you. I’ll gladly pay those prices if you actually know what you are doing and I have before if it’s good. But this joint is way too pretentious. This is as I said, TexMex as average as you can get. You can’t even get chips and salsa for free. That’ll run ya $ 7. Instead you get a couple tortillas they say are homemade but taste like a premade mix that they just flatten and bake. Along with a mexican gravy? Say what? Tasted like brown gravy mix with chili powder mixed. Listen, I have a lot of Texans in my family, and I have a lot of Mexican friends. So I suppose that makes me a TexMex person. That can be a thing right? And I’ve never seen or had tortillas and gravy.
And let’s not forget the service. Place was at about 40−50% capacity and service only took a cool hair under TWO HOURS from the time we were seated to the time food came. I know this place is less than a month old, but I could watch my hair turning gray we sat there so long.
About the only other thing I can think that is even slightly worth noting but probably not, is the fact that they have this «fusion» TexMex menu, insane price points, and then they hand you a cheap plastic menu to order off off. Geesh. Most of the tables are also high tops, (but not all) which certainly limits you unless you are some youngin’ in there just for the tequila.
Oh, and don’t bother with their website. I pretty sure North Korea can build a more aesthetically pleasing site.
I may be back in a long long time, but it’ll be a long long time.

I never write bad reviews as a rule, but the food we had was the worst texmex, in fact the worst food we have ever had ever. We should have known when two tables around where we were seated complained about their food and left. We were offered Chips and Salsa, sure we want some (werent told that it is 7.00). most tastless salsa we have had. The menu has no real texmex on it except everything has smoked chicken or pork in it. Before our meal arrived we got a complimentary bowl of a brown gravy and two stale flour tortillas. Brown gravy tasted like Heinz jar gravy. Spanish rice tasted like Uncle Bens microwave and black beans were a black tastless goo. Go to Taco Johns for good quick TexMex or San Pedro for a great sit down meal.

Good but a bit pricy for Mexican food. $ 12 for nachos. They were good but not $ 12 good. Sat at the bar, new bar tender in training. Staff seemed to gather at that end of the bar when they were not busy, bit distracting will probably sit farther down the bar next time to eliminate that. The different kind of hot sauces were interesting. I tried them all.

Update: went for lunch today. Was sad to see no lunch menu. Definitely too pricy for an average week day lunch. Had the nachos this time. Trust me, skip them. They were 12 bucks and awful. Cheese was just weird and dried onto some chips (see picture, it’s hard to explain) and half the chips were soggy from swimming in a pool of grease.
Old review:
Impressive for their first day open! I’ll be honest, the thought of another Mexican restaurant in Kearney didn’t seem like a good idea to me at first, but this place really is different than our other options.
Service was quick and friendly! The server hadn’t tried any of the margaritas but we took a chance and tried a few. I had the pineapple jalapeño margarita and my husband had the strawberry habanero margarita. We both chose the chili rim for our drinks. They were wonderful! A great balance of sweet, spicy, and tequila.
Instead of chips and salsa they serve tortillas and ‘gravy’. I think the gravy was enchilada sauce. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have rather had chips and salsa, but I respect them for trying something unique. We also tried the bacon-​wrapped jalapeños for an appetizer, which were served with chips and a very yummy fresh pico.
My kids had the kids meals — beef and cheese quesadillas and a beef and bean burrito and both seemed happy with them. I tried three street tacos — an Al Pastor, a barbacoa, and a cerdo (they had fancier names I can’t remember) and my husband had a diablo shrimp entrée (also w a fancier name). He loved his entrée and the jalapeño cornbread it came with. My tacos were good, though the corn tortillas were soggy on the bottom and the meat could have been warmer.
We will definitely return! Can’t wait to try the deserts on their menu!

a MUST if you are going through Kearney! Next level bananas deliciousness! Finally something worth stopping for in this town.

I stopped in when I saw the new restaurant was open. The new TexMex concept in this former Carlos OKellys is beautiful. I sat at this huge bar and Kat the bartender explained the menu and highlighted the «street tacos». I ordered three different ones for a light lunch and they were unique and delicious! Then Kat told me all about the Tequilia optons and gave me several sips to sample. I selected two shots of different kinds and they were so smooth and a good decision. Great new option for Kearney. I will be back!!!