Uncle Julio’s Hacienda

Wished I could turn back time on this place to when the had bigger shrimp and knew how to cook their steak. The servers used to be friendly and trained, but it doesn’t appear so anymore. I feel bad I never posted a good review when they were great. The last three visits have confirmed to me it wasn’t a one time deal. Their shortcuts to cutting costs are more important than consistent high quality food and service. I was so thrown off by this I went online to find out if there was any ownership and CEO changes and sure enough they did. Also, my sister used to come here 2x a week for years told me things really starting changing last year.

Meh. This place is good. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just not worth the wait, or the money. The drinks are wonderful, and I would come here just for that. I actually did enjoy my food, I just didn’t enjoy it for $ 20 a plate. It’s extremely expensive for what you get. I know, it’s the area you’re in… blah blah blah. I just think for that price, I want something more. The service was average. The wait here on a Friday night is INSANE. I just don’t think I’ll be back, but who knows. If someone rally wanted to go there, I wouldn’t say no… I just wouldn’t be super excited.

The atmosphere is pretty authentic but the food portions were small. They used to be 3 times the size! The décor is nice but I won’t be coming back. Food took exactly 23 minutes to come out. Too long for a 239 lb hungry man.

Fantastic food and drinks!!! Our food was hot and fresh and the server was very knowledgable about the food, the menu and the area surrounding the restaurant. We look forward to returning!

Uncle Julios on butterfield road The steak and shrimp with garlic butter is a must try love this place

This place is ale aya busy and it has such a great tasting food. So you have to make a reservation but you won’t be seated. We always have a great time, food and service. This time we were celebrating my bday and had very crappy service, the manager on duty took care of us and somewhat compensated for the bad taste on our visit.
A few things that went wrong:
My drink was delivered wrong twice
My boyfriend got his food taken away before he was done eating
My mom’s stake was over cooked and so on…
It was a Wednesday night but this place is always packed…
The food is always great so we will come back.

This review is based on their service as I haven’t tried their food. We went here earlier this week for my brother’s birthday. We were told there was a 45 minute wait and that we had 8 parties ahead of us. While waiting we saw plenty of empty tables that were never filled. After 45 minutes we asked if our table was ready and the hostess told us we had about 7 minutes left. 15 minutes later we asked the hostess again if our table was ready. She said no and that it may still be awhile because we had 4 parties in front of us still. Anyone who can do simple math can tell it would take us about another hour until we get our table since it took an hour for 4 parties to leave. They should have been upfront with us when we asked how much time was remaining instead of telling us it would be approximately 7 minutes. We left and went to Las Palmas instead where we were sat immediately.

Staff is friendly and the place is clean. The food is generally good but it’s not very authentic at all. The only great part is the fact that they make their own chips in house. They are nice and thin and endless. The food is very Americanized and they don’t have horchata? Also pricey. Go to a small Mexican place for cheaper and more authentic food. On the bright side, this food is good but it’s just not my favorite.

This place used to be good… drinks are awesome food was good but this place smells like fish all the time last three times I was there fish fish fish… swirls with Julio or Patron a swirl is a frozen sangria and frozen white wine topped with your choice of tequila excellent drink … Can u get rid of the fish though

These guys are on the border of 2 and 3 stars and I generally rate in favor of the business except for this time. My 2 star review will just be white noise since a lot of people really seem to like this place.
The restaurant looks dynamite inside and out — very colorful and whatnot. The place is kind-​of loud which suits us just fine since our young son talks in a bit of a yell. We thought our server was going to be on the ball this night, but after taking our drink order and bringing our appetizer, he pretty much forgot us. The food wasn’t so great — any suburban taqueria will blow this place away. 4 non-​alcoholic beverages, 3 entrées, an kids-​meal and an appetizer set us back a hundo and change. Like I said, there were probably a dozen taquerias within a 10 minute drive that would’ve been hella-​better.

couple of my daughters friends and moms went to lunch on one of the last warm Chicago days and got seated on the patio. The kids menu had the basics and we ordered chicken taco. chicken quesadillas and chicken fajitas for the kids. the ladies ordered veggie & Chicken tamales and cheese quesadillas. I really liked my veggie tamale not the chicken as much.

This place was very blah! Not tasty at all. I felt like I make all these food at home. The place looks nice. But it isn’t authentic. It was just a waste

Zero stars. See my pic post for our host seating experience. (Being told we had to wait when restaurant was 80% empty…)
After finally being seated– we waited 10 minutes without a single worker even looking at us as they walked by and served adjacent tables.
Finally a worker walked by and asked, «Has anybody come by to take a drink order yet?» We said, «nope! Not a single person has even said hello».
Another 5 minutes rolls by, and we saw the one server go to the host and say we had not been touched yet. A blond 16 year old host looked at us, then went back to work. Still nobody came.
At that point my blood was boiling. So I hopped on OpenTable and made a reservation for WeberGrill (next door).
We walked out. And the blond host says, «oh– thank you for coming!» Totally clueless that we’d been ignored. I told her we had waited close to 20 minutes without being so much as looked at. And that we were headed to another restaurant. «Oh– gee… I’m reeeeealy sorry!»
Glad we left. I will NEVER be back. The food I had here before was way overpriced. $ 20 meat fajitas? Too salty. And service has always been amateur hour. Imagine 16 year old clueless kids trying to run a restaurant.
Epic fail.

I have been to this place for a get together, the interior is very unique and traditional.
I love the concept of making Guacamole in front of customers. It was flavorful !!! For drink I opted Swirl. Loved it !!
Pulled chicken quesadilla was my choice for dinner but it was not that impressive.
Service was really slow.
Overall 2 star for SWIRL !!!

Fantastic as always.
Wait staff is great. Very attentive even though the place is packed right now.

This place is great for lunch, but if you come here after work prepare for it to be crowded. The bar is fairly small, so it’s hard to find a seat at it. The margaritas as good, but not very cheap.

Went with a relatively big group (~10 people) on a Thursday night. Service was meh; nothing too spectacular, a few hiccups here and there, and our waiter had the softest voice I had ever heard. BUT that being said, we can be quite the rambunctious crowd, and he didn’t lose his mind so ten points to Gryffindor! (Imaginary brownie points to you if you got that haha)
Food:
A) Carne Asada: about three of us ordered this. I definitely recommend this for the carnivore in your life. Mesquite grilled, marinated beef skirt steak that is chargrilled. Juicy, sizzling hot perfection! Love this one! It comes with a side of pinto beans (get black beans if you want it vegetarian/​without pork), rice, cheese and guac. Sub out the rice for extra beans if you’re low-​carbing! Few more substitutions will make this paleo/​primal :). A good hunk of meat for a really good price ¹⁰⁄₁₀
B) Red Snapper Fajitas: These were ok. Red snapper was grilled, and served with a chipotle crema and sautéed sweet peppers. Conceptually a good idea, but the fish was not marinated and not particularly fresh. A non marinated fish would not have been too big an issue if there was an ingredient/​spice blend that harmonized the snapper along with the other accompaniments. Plated presentation of dish was fair. Overall? ⁶⁄₁₀
C) Table side guacamole: This one is always a lot of fun. Quick glance makes it seems like you are overpaying, but you aren’t! You actually get a lot more bang for your buck, and a server comes over and custom makes the guac from scratch right in front of you. You get to control the amount of onions, tomatoes, jalepeno, lime, cilantro that you want. You can put as much or as little of any of the ingredients as you want. We loved this so much we got a second order of this later on. 10/​10, but can be ¹⁄₁₀ if you don’t know what to tell the server to put in it, and you end up making bad decisions lol.
D) Soft Steak Tacos: Quite good. The tortillas used are flour tortillas. They’re made in house, and are quite soft. Steak was well marinated, and chopped to perfectly sized pieces. Not too overbearing or too big of a proportion. ⁸⁄₁₀
E) Chicken and Steak Quesadilla: Appetizer. We got ½ chicken and ½ steak. Steak and chicken pieces are both well marinated, and enveloped in melty ooey-​gooey monterey jack cheese, onions, tomatoes, with a side of guac and sour cream. ⁷⁄₁₀
F) Nachos: We opted to have our with ground beef. Came with beans, cheddar, monterey jack, jalepeno, guac, sour cream. Very good; but honestly its hard to mess up nachos! 8.5÷10
Service hiccups :
A) I specifically ordered my steak well done, no red/​pink at all. I wanted it dead-​er than deadmau5 (again, imaginary brownie points to you if you got that!) Despite the waiter saying that the meat would be butterflied to ensure it was exceptionally «grey» on the inside, this was not the case, and despite the waiter coming by and seeing me peer around the carne asada and stab it a couple times with my fork, one of the other guests at my table had to hail down the waiter and had to tell him I was displeased with the dish, to which at that point he offered to have the dish sent back. Mind you it was a Thursday night, not a weekend, so it wasn’t too terribly busy.
B) We loved the table side guac so much we wanted another round. Instead of bringing out the table side guac cart a side of guacamole was brought out instead. We had to hail a different waiter to explain the situation before our own waiter came over.
C) Despite our party being 10 people the waiter never once asked if there were any food allergies or restrictions. We did have dietary restrictions that I had to proactively vocalize to the waiter.
TL;DR: Good place to come with a large group or a pound group. Super casual (jeans, tshirts, sneakers are totally fine). Get table side guac and Carne Asada. Skip the Red Snapper Fajitas. Had to proactively vocalize to waiter dietary restrictions and a few dish mishaps.

Meh. Got here early at about 11:30. There were three guys at the bar watching monster truck races, so I grabbed a stool a couple down. After watching the bartender cut his fruit for the day for a few minutes he noticed me and came over.
After reviewing the menu I asked where the burritos were. He was very nice and told me that they don’t have burritos… WHAT??? I decided on the fajitas. They came out very quickly. They were nondescript. The salsa was ok. The service was ok. This place is… ok.

Went here on a Wednesday night with my favorite person in the world. She got mad because I was a little late :-), but I knew there would be chips and salsa.
We sat at the bar and ate the aforementioned chips and salsa. It was really good. We got seated but not until I had to go up to the hostess and ask why after twenty minutes and other people being seated before us. I asked and was told «your table is ready». Weird.
We sat down and ordered the ceviche fresco. THere was a ton of lime and cilantro plus the little tostada chips! Good job, Uncle Julio. Funny side note: Bartender told us Uncle Julio does not exist. The franchise was founded by a Lebanese man! Anyways, we split the chicken and steak fajitas for two. It came with all the FIXINS’ (EASTBOUND AND DOWN REFERENCE) but the steak wasn’t even cooked. We had to ask for it to be actually cooked. Turned out great.
Not bad for two people and around 60 bucks. UNCLE JULIO IS NOT REAL.

The ambiance of uncle julio’s hacienda is a homey tex-​mex party. The best thing about the food is they have a strong appetizer line-​up. Each table gets a basket of tortilla chips made within the restaurant (1 basket= 2 – 3 people) and cup of some excellent roasted pepper salsa. Aside from the salsa, you can order some creamy, well seasoned guacamole made at your table among some other types of dip that were probably just as good.
When our entrees came around, I was surprised to see that they appeared to be cheaper looking than the awesome appetizers. I was right. Flavors were good but one dimensional and most dishes come with a side of beans that I didn’t care for at all.
The service was decent but our waiter looked pretty frantic running around past other servers. I went to the bathroom about 20 feet from my table and I probably saw over 10 servers on my way there.
I think they’d make an excellent catering company.