El Jefe

Terrible service! Though the food was decent, the wait for our meals was very long. One order came out when everyone else was done eating! The wait staff just hung around and chatted with each other rather than see if we needed more coffee, water, condiments, etc.
Cali, our waitress, was rude when we asked for a discount after waiting so long. Too bad.

One of the best places to stop in PS. The el jefe nachos are the best but the service is quite the opposite. The food speaks for itself and I would recommend the nachos any day but don’t expect 5 star luxury service at all… bus boys are great but the team taking the orders is …

Cool spot to catch some drinks and food. If you love tequila this place is for you. The food portions here are in the shareable/​slider side. The must get item here are the nachos. They are amazing and you will miss out if you don’t get it. The tacos here are good too but they aren’t your traditional tacos. They are more artisanal than anything else. They also come 3 to a plate.

I was killing time before meeting up with friends at a near by lounge and I found this place on Unilocal.It did not disappoint! Really cool vibe, extremely friendly and helpful staff, delicious tequila and food, what more could you ask for? Will definitely stop by during my next visit to Palm Springs, maybe check out the pool first!

The margaritas suck and the food is completely meh. $ 15 for pomegranate guacamole and watery salsa? Greedy, tacky, and pathetic.
Most importantly, the service here is terrible. The Steven Segal greasy pony tail douche canoe behind the bar was a total prick to my mother and me when I asked for some clarification on the bill (for the aforementioned watery salsa). Even worse, the manager stood there and did nothing to dissolve/​resolve the situation. Terrible customer service AND overpriced food? No wonder this bar is always empty. We won’t be returning, and will steer our guests and friends in another direction as well…

The tacos were pretty tasty. The guac’ was good. The service was very good. We enjoyed our meal. The hotel itself seems like a really cheesy place, geared toward goobers. But other than that, it was a good experience. Would eat again.

We stayed at the saguaro for a concern and went here a couple times. Our first experience was great! We went for drinks on a Wednesday evening. Our waitress was fun and fast! Based on that experience I would’ve said four stars.
Unfortunately the next morning we had the worst experience. The waitress was ridiculously slow. Literally 1 hour for three of the five people to get their food. The other two people didn’t even order because of the lack of service. The waitress never brought two of our items: water and coffee. She messed up the bill and had to re-​do it twice each time taking her ten minutes or more. We finally had to leave and tell her to charge it to the room because she never did get the checks right. She also charged someone else’s meal to my card.
Just now getting home I see that I was charged twice for the same $ 31.43 ticket. I had to call my bank and ask them to cancel it. They even had a two touch POS. NOT THAT DIFFICULT!
The saguaro is a cute hotel but you should probably get food elsewhere.

It pains me to write this review; however, it’s my hope that management will read it and take action to improve the unacceptable service (more below).
Pros: The cactus tacos were great. Was frustrated that the Taco Tuesday doesn’t feature a single vegetarian taco with happy hour pricing though.
The busser cleared our table and filled our water on time. He seemed to be the only person who focused on all of the tables.
Cons: We sat down and waited about 5 minutes before I flagged down a server and asked to get a server for our table. Another minute went by and a woman came over to greet us.
Our sangria and salsa took at least 5 – 8 more minutes to arrive. The sangria is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever tasted. I couldn’t finish it. It tasted musty and I question whether or not it had any alcohol.
My boyfriend said only one (short rib tacos) taco was good. The others (carnitas, fish, and chicken) didn’t taste good to him.
Our server rarely checked on us and seemed to be flustered, running around the restaurant.
We waited forever to flag her down to get our check. It got to the point where she had seen us with my purse on the table and everything cleared from the table. Finally, she approached us and we asked for the check.
Honestly, I wish we had driven to another restaurant instead of conveniently eating where we were lodging. El Jefe was absolutely disappointing in service and food/​drink quality.
Management, please make efforts to improve the service. The place has so much potential, yet is lacking integrity and care from the servers.

Our waitress raved about the fish tacos, but really they looked and tasted and were textured like old frozen fish sticks. The hot sauce (bottled) is good though.

I was a huge fan of this place up until the menu change. For some reason Saguaro & Iron Chef Jose Garces cut ties & along with that his AMAZING menu also went with him. I woke up craving the mushroom tacos or the nachos encarnacion & long behold a completely different menu is now being presented. Even the Michelada being made now tastes different.

–The food was tasty but priced higher than the quality merited.
–The draft beer line-​up featured craft beer and was limited but serviceable.
–The clientele ruined the atmosphere between a crying baby and super-​loud inconsiderate drunks (before noon, no less).
–The service was slow enough that we got up from the table twice to look for our waiter. Considering how slow the place was, I’m stumped as to why.
I don’t think I’ll be back.

The burger was super tasty, though the fries were soggy. Ask for crispy fries.
The charred pineapple margarita was delicious.
Service super friendly, and it’s a cute place. Definitely hit it up for happy hour, between 3pm-​6pm.

El Jefe is perfect for a low-​key night out or a good place to get started on your PS bar hopping adventures. I love the vibe here. Very cool décor and it is crazy DARK inside. Love the music they play. The cost of drinks is about as much as you would pay anywhere else in Palm Springs. Bartenders are super friendly. The chips and salsa are yummy but I haven’t tried any of their other food.
The big negative for me is that there is no outside patio. That’s obviously not enough to deter me from coming here, though.
If you’re looking for a place that is bustling with activity, this probably isn’t it.

We ordered the «Encarnacion Nachos» the description indicates skirt steak, but when the nachos came out it was practically shredded beef, there was a lot of caramelized onions on the nachos as well. If I were you, please skip this particular plate. The melted cheese was also burned all around the edges that we barely had enough to cover the nachos.
The drinks are nothing to rage about. I mean we were excited to try the margaritas, but they are average. AVERAGE.

TLDR: breakfast available at the bar; self-​service seating; attentive service; heavy handed pourers
El Jefe is located inside the hotel property to the right of the check-​in desk. Quaint and reminiscent of a southwestern bar, this location is neither loud not quiet. There’s group seating and individual seating. We came at breakfast time and redeemed our free margaritas. Does no one in this town day drink?
We enjoyed the very attentive service by all the staff and decided to order breakfast. We payed a hefty price tag for a lox platter with our toasted bagel. It was beautifully presented and was enough as a heavy snack for 2 people. The hard-​boiled eggs were a title weird but were eaten, nonetheless. But if you ever needed a drink, come here. Well at least in the morning anyway.

This is a Mexican place inside of The Saguaro Hotel. I’ve been here twice now and they are so good! Their nachos are just awesome! But I sub the steak for chicken. We had that to share with 5 girls! Huge portion! For entrée, I got their chicken torta which was HEAVEN! I love the vibe here! At night they have DJs here but we never went to check out if they have a dance floor or not? Love it!

Stopped by for breakfast before our hike. El Jefe’s atmosphere really does well to blend in with the rest of the lobby at Saguaro. Would definitely have stayed to relax longer but we had to leave before it hit the 100s outside for our hike.
Breakfast was good and servers were very friendly, but it did take a while for us to get our food and bill.
It is always hot outside in Palm Springs so I would recommend you stay inside and unwind with a drink from El Jefe if you don’t want to face the heat with the poolside bar outside (also there were a lot of kids outside swimming in the pool, so it is more quiet inside the lobby).

After seeing our room at the Sagauro we didn’t expect much from the mexican bar/​restaurant in the lobby. And the clearly didn’t exceed that expectation.
Judging from the speed of the service you won’t get very drunk here, unless you stay all night and only order tequilla by the bottle. They do serve some smaller food items from the menu. I tried some tacos. Trying to eat them was a challenge. picking the mup with my fingers didn’t work, unless I wanted all the content to end up on the table. There was simply too much of everything on the taco, so I had to use a fork and knife.
Did it taste good? Well. not really.
At the end we waited about 40 minutes to get our check. and half an hour later we were set to leave the place… and never come back again.

I was excited to check this place out after reading about it on Unilocal and it was super convenient since we were spending the night at the Saguaro. We walked in and sat at a small table in the back, service was super slow but it is a bar so didn’t expect much. Our server finally came by after about 15 – 20 mins of us sitting down but I wasn’t upset since I was on vacation mode and was just chatting it up with the BF. We ordered a couple orders of tacos, which honestly weren’t that great. I really wasn’t feeling the shrimp chorizo ones, even though I thought that woulda been my fave. The carnitas tacos were pretty good though. Each order comes with three small tacos, street tacos style. The best part was the nachos and we added shredded beef, which made it so much better! If anything, I’d come by here for those nachos! The tacos are forgettable.
What surprised me about this place was the water, yes the water. So my BF commented that the water tasted a little weird, and I said maybe it’s lemon. So I asked the server if the water had lemon and she seemed surprise. She said no lemon… she said that’s just how Palm Springs tap water taste then she asked if we preferred filtered water. Of course, we prefer filtered water! Who wouldn’t?! We were especially parched from the bottomless mimosas earlier that day and spending the day at their pool so we were super appreciative of the filtered water. El Jefe, please serve your customers the filtered water, especially at the price you’re charging for small tacos, it’s only right!
Anyway, just to warn you… service is super slow! The place wasn’t even that busy since it was a Sunday night, but dinner took a couple hours and we didn’t end up meeting with friends at the Ace Hotel because it ended up being pretty late when we finished our meal here. Make sure you come here only if you’re ready to just hangout leisurely.

I love this spot!!!
Had a great time with my friends and the food was awesome!!! Walked over to this restaurant after trying Tinto (Iron Chef Jose Garces’s other restaurant) and started off with a few margaritas. I wanted to try the food here in comparison to Tinto so ordered 5 dishes. All I can say is OMG!!! All dishes were excellent with tons of flavor. I can honestly say I prefer Jose Garces’s El Hefe over Tinto (His other restaurant) not to say Tinto isn’t a good restaurant.
The atmosphere is great for groups with great music and the drinks are awesome. I love restaurants that aren’t shy of giving good amounts of alcohol.
The servers add to the experience with top notch service. They were talkative, gave honest opinions about their favorite dishes and even went along with embarrassing a friend with a happy birthday song out loud which is something I’m told they usually don’t do.
I’m from the Los Angeles area and would most definitely come back to Palm Springs for El Hefe.
The Elote (corn) with chipotle and queso fresco here was some of the best corn I’ve had in comparison to street corn in LA and I can eat that all day if given the opportunity. Just a side note lol
Dinner 3÷19÷2015