El Potro

Great place to eat. If you are looking for great Mexican food El Potro is a nice choice. They have a variety of salsa’s ranging from mild to extreme as you choose what your up for. Waiter service with positive attitudes and clean environment. In my opinion you can’t ask for more.

OK where do i begin!!! this is the only restaurant next to the hotel we stay at for work. we get a 10% to 15% discount for eating there when we stay at the hotel depending on who’s working, nobody ever knows what percent. then you get to the register and they cant figure how to give you 10% off using a calculator, so i usually show them. one of the last times i ate there she figured up the discount and charged me .96 cents for a $ 9.60 meal, no training obviously. communication is difficult since most don’t speak English hardly at all. you can tell when they are slow business wise, they are all out back playing soccer in the parking lot. mmm running around getting sweaty then cooking my food, can we say sanitary! the last time i was there was on a Saturday, the entrance to the restaurant is a corridor about 12 ft long to another door. we sat down and asked our waiter if there was any specials, he said .99 margaritas, i said wow on a sat night that’s odd. so we decided to order them and eat chips and salsa, which was free by the way. i decided to order some queso and it was like water, it literally ran off my chip. but i figured hey .99 margaritas what the heck! so after drinking for awhile i get a bill for over 40.00 dollars. i asked my server about the .99 margaritas and why he was charging us 3 dollars plus and he said that’s with a entrée purchase. I told him you didn’t say that when we set down. i asked for a manger and she said the same thing. and said the sign is in the corridor behind the door. and she walked away and wouldn’t come back to our table. so i tried to order a salad, they said that didn’t qualify. so i ordered a dinner that i wouldn’t eat because I’m sure they messed with it. i also said i wanted to pay for my Friends margarita and said i couldn’t. so if you went out with your wife, she would have to pay her own bill. needless to say i saved about 29.00 bucks but he should of said that and not assumed we were going to order an entrée. very misleading, unprofessional and scandalous. i would give this less than one star if i could. i haven’t been back and never will set foot on their property again. The «locals» seem to like it but they don’t really have much choice like we do.

On a short stay in Ottumwa, I noticed El Potro across from the hotel and given that I am always trying these little Mexican places and it was so close, it was my dinner choice. I had planned on Los Cactus, but it was apparently not open on Monday evening. El Potro was a nice enough little family run place.
I had pretty standard chips and salsa. The salsa did not have a lot of kick. It was the pureed style, which is fine with me, not overloaded with onion, but also did not have much heat or even green chile flavor. Just OK.
I ordered Chile Verde (Pork) which in retrospect was probably a mistake. They have the cookie-​cutter menu that I have seen in so many restaurants that I swear that they are either owned by one company or they subscribe to the Standard Mexican Menu Journal. The menu is not small. In fact would say they should shrink it and focus on fewer items.
So the Pork was not not particularly good. It was a little stale, some pieces were a little chewy but not really dry. They were definitely too salty and from me who likes some salt, this means they were too salty. I ate them with warm corn tortillas that I asked for, (non-​standard). The tortillas helped me deal with the excess salt. Beans and rice were pretty standard.
I am saying two stars for the pork in the chile verde and cannot recommend them. I suspect on days when it is fresh it is much better. I recommend that you order something they (should) have to prepare for you like huevos rancheros or tacos de carne asada.
I normally would not consider returning to a two star joint, but I will probably hit El Potro again if the same circumstance arises. I just will try something else. I like Mexican even when it is not stellar.