Rico’s American Grill

Over-​priced and poorly executed food. Ordered the vegetable risotto. It was the worst risotto I’ve ever been served. It was basically tomato soup with under-​cooked risotto floating in it. The server did offer to bring something else, so I got the baked mac and cheese. It was better than the risotto but still not what you’d expect for the price-​point.

I have been to this restaurant quite a number of times for various and sundry reasons since it is in a convenient location. The service and food has been spotty (to say the least!!!) in the past, and I know a new manager and chef was brought on board a few months ago. I met a client there for drinks, and we ended up having dinner. I had the Five-​Spiced Short Ribs and he had the Cuban Reuben. The side we ordered on his reuben was the sweet potato fries, since I LOVE sweet potato fries. Yumm! To say my short ribs was delicious is an absolute understatement. Is there hope for this place? With this dish I would say ‘YES!” The meat was melt in one’s mouth. The sauce was what I would consider lickable. I actually ordered some extra of the sauce and left it on the table and had to go back. No way was I eating the meat without it! (Oh, yeah. Forgot to mention that I took part of my meat home.) The dish was topped with spinach — I am assumed steamed and lightly seasoned — and maybe polenta? It was sort of a cornmeal dish. I would have preferred mashed potatoes, but the polenta — if that’s what it is – was good. Perfecto accompaniments. He said his reuben was good. It was quite thick as far as the bread and meat. I am not a sandwich eater, and I was enjoying the fries and my meat too much to even care to sample it. Unfortunately, the dishes, when brought to the table, the fries were cold and so was my meat, signaling to me it had been prepared and not immediately served. What a shame. You know that sweet potato fries are ONLY good when eaten right out of the fryer. And, as I stated, my meat was cold as well. Service is still a bit on the slow side. There is hope for the restaurant if they can get it together. My dish was really tasty. Let’s hope the service will improve.

I was underwhelmed by this restaurant. It was pricey, and so not worth it on the quality/​tastefullness aspect.
I had the grilled corn tortilla soup, which was actually quite pleasing and the restaurant’s only redeeming quality. Hence, the two stars.
However, the greens salad was not. I asked for the addition of medium rare steak, and it was more medium well to well done. The salad had no taste, I actually had to use the salt!
I’m staying at the Hilton and truly feel there should be better options for guests.

I ordered the Squaw peak Bennie. Description «Blue corn biscuit topped with grilled Chorizo, avocado, tomatoes and two poached eggs covered in Adobo hollandaise. The Biscuit was dry and tasted stale. I think it was made of stale Scone mix. The eggs were slightly overdone. You really can’t get sliced avocado and tomato wrong. Here’s the kicker. If your gona do a Bennie you MUST get the hollandaise right. In this category I have to give them an epic FAIL! Let’s look past the fact that there was no trace of Adobo flavor in the sauce and concentrate on the sauce it’s self. All I tasted was butter and salt. No lemon or pepper at all. Maybe I’m a snob but if your doing a Benedict do it right! Good service and reasonably priced.

Food sucks; place is dirty; waited 45 mins for eggs, bacon, toast. Dirty patio and tables. Has potential but needs better management

This is seriously some of the worst food that my family has ever eaten. One item came out STILL FROZEN! I’m not kidding. My chicken sandwich was microwaved and rubbery (the whole thing was nuked — even the lettuce was hot) and the sauce tasted like Spaghetti O’s sauce poured over the chicken. Even if it’s free don’t eat here. They will entice you when you check in with $ 20 per day of Hilton coupons to dine at the resort but it’s still not worth it. RUN! — Go somewhere else — this place is awful.
Apologies to the wait staff — they were very friendly but there is no excuse for food this bad.

Not really sure why there are so many bad reviews on Unilocal about this place… I found it impeccable both times I’ve been here for lunch, making me want to stop by again, and maybe try their breakfast too. First time I had Grace, second time Zach. Staff is really friendly and welcoming, menu is variegated. I wanted to get their tenderloin steak but I was warned it was pretty small so I ended up having their rib eye, cooked to perfection, juicy and tasty. It was paired with crispy roasted potatoes and green beans, a perfect meal to go with an ordinary day. The location is also wonderful, just a few feet from the lobby of the Hilton!!!

Currently sitting in restaurant and it has been 10 minutes sitting at our table and still have not seen our waiter to even take our drink order.

This place was solicited on the internet as a great Valentines Day spot. Being that it had the Hilton name, I booked a reservation. The food, service, and ambiance is just step up from Denny’s though. Not what was expected at all.

Appalling. The one star goes solely to an apologetic hostess.
DH and kids got the buffet which they were relatively happy with but no silverware. Waitress verbally acknowledged no silverware but never brought any. I scavenged from other tables.
I ordered a dish. Something with fish. When it arrived I ate a few bites and found a big black hair. Unable to find waitress but DH found the hostess who offered to take it off the bill, which we eventually did.
Fast forward to night– this happened about 30 minutes ago. Somehow the above wasn’t enough to scare me off completely– staying on resort makes proximity a redeeming quality when only a few other options exist. Forgot that its Valentines Day — hanging out with the kids — was told 20 – 25 minute wait. No biggie but we decided to head to the Mexican place down the street.
Walking through the parking lot my kids were freaking out — «What is that?» «It’s a spider!» Something moving rapidly from the building. It was a cockroach about 1.5″ long. Perhaps they just sprayed insecticide.
These incidents have convinced me that this place has little regard for cleanliness. Won’t do it again. Despite staying at the property for a few more days.

Excellent breakfast. I stayed at the Hilton next door. I don’t know about lunch or dinner but the breakfast is worth it.

I have no idea why anyone has positive things to say about this place. There was not one redeeming quality to this place. We were staying at the Hilton on property and people reccommended this location and the menu looked amazing! The positive things stop there.
The whole experience had a weird vibe to it. This is the type of establishment theater comes across as pretentious. Trying to be gourmet but falling oh so very short. Our server made us feel awkward. Couldn’t tell if she was trying to be friendly and helpful or condescending. There was only one other table while we were in there, yet the service was lacking. Got the chorizo «fondue» Which pretty much tasted like cheese wiz with chorizo mixed in. We also got the pumpkin squash soup, which was the best tasting past of the meal. Way too salty though.
Everyone at the table tried something different And we all met with the same consensus. Super expensive waste of dinner. The tenderloin was off, like the fat was hard and half of it was super gamey tasting… like maybe it had started going bad. To reiterate that, we fed a couple bites to my dog, who has only thrown up rocks in his lifetime… and he threw up the tenderloin… Coincidence? Between five meals we found nothing any of us were even remotely interested in finishing, even at 24 bucks a pop.
We were super bummed with this whole experience. Service was not good, food was way overpriced, ambiance was nothing to write home about and nothing was enjoyable to eat. It literally became the joke of the whole trip. Save yourself a ton of money and go anywhere else.

I travel a lot for business and use Unilocal all of the time, however I have never taken the time to write a review. In this case I have to agree with Al and give a public service announcement to avoid this place.
I was a guest at the hotel and had coupons for food purchases, so I did the Breakfast buffet, not bad but how can you ruin breakfast.
Lunch and dinner is quite a different story.
I was with a group of friends who wanted to eat dinner here so I joined them. After studying the menu I concluded they must just be trying to be different as there was not one item I thought looked appetizing. The combinations of ingredients were just strange.
All of the items I decided to try were just poor quality and tasteless.
The last night of my stay at the hotel I had a few food coupons left so I decided to just get a burger, pretty hard to ruin a burger, besides it was free ($ 13.95 without a coupon). I had the house burger with blue cheese, it was so overpowering all you could taste was blue cheese. Turns out I preferred the tasteless food.
If you don’t mind spending $ 17.95 for breakfast OK, but skip the other meals.

RUN NOW!
I absolutely hate writing 1 star reviews but I feel the need to provide a public service announcement and protect the community from this horrible disgusting food.
My wife and I visited this location for lunch after checking into the hotel. I am a diamond member with Hilton so we got these discount slips to use on the property for meals. We decided to try Rico’s. I am very very sorry we did this and I would not eat here even if it was 100% free.
Let’s begin with the service. We had a server were English is her second language and hard trouble understanding her and she struggled to understand us which is frustrating to say the least. She did not do a good job of following up with us or keeping our drinks filled. Since it was just my wife and I she was more interested in joking around and spending time with the group of 7 she had which was obviously more of a tip for her. The place was near empty and she was frazzled.
We decided to order an appetizer and picked Chorizo Fondue. Fondue is supposed to be served very hot. This was barely warm and congealed quickly making it difficult to eat and ruins the flavor when this happens. The actual taste of the fondue was just ok even when it was luke warm.
My wife also tried this special seasonal soup Pumpkin Sweet Potato. It was DISGUSTING! This tasted more like a watered down gravy from a can with no smell or even a hint of pumpkin or sweet potato flavor. It’s hard to even explain how gross this dish was. We told the server and she took it off the ticket after chastising us how no one else has complained… Really a customer tells you how bad a dish is and you want to argue with us and make use feel like its our fault… thats not good customer service.
I ordered the Pub Burger and was highly disappointed. You know you are in trouble when your server does not even understand what cooked medium means. I had to explain I wanted a nice medium which is pink throughout the patty. She was confused like I asked her to do math. I added bacon to the sandwich and selected onion rings as the side.
When the burger came out it was a small patty much smaller than the bun was. It seemed like a 4 or 5 ounce patty not even the 8 ounce I would have expected. The burger was unevenly cooked and was a mix of medium and well done. There seasoning was weak and needed to be properly salted. The bacon was not cooked crispy it was some strange flat chewy bacon closer to a jerky style bacon instead of a fresh crispy bacon you expect. The burger was not very juicy and just not an impressive burger. Especially for $ 14.95 I have had WAY better burger from fast food chains. The onion rings were SO soaked in grease and had the same issue as my wife’s sweet potato fries. The oil was clearly not hot enough when they were dropped and it soaked up so much oil. When you pushed on the onion ring or fry it just dripped oil.
My wife ordered the Three Wagyu Beef Brisket Sliders and did not even finish them. She picked one apart and tried to eat some of it and couldn’t. The brisket was mostly fat and not beef. Brisket should have a good mix of both and mostly beef. This was more like ¾ fat with a little meat. The flavor profile was bland and so under whelming I did not even want to eat it and I love brisket. Her sweet potato fries were bad as previously mentioned.
Lastly this is HIGHLY overpriced food for the quality provided and the lack of service. Just save yourself the trouble and go somewhere else. Even if the resort gives you free money to eat there it’s not worth the horrible experience which will live with you forever.
The manager was onsite and not once did he even come over to our table and apologize about the food or ask how things were. The manager clearly does not care about his customers and has no control over the kitchen when this type of food is going out. I am shocked how bad this experience was. I was even further disappointed when I informed the front desk at the resort they did nothing to make it right or offer to make it right. Not the Hilton experience I am used too.

Just ate some of the breakfast food there. Had the eggs Bennie, biggest issue first bite of second half, a big ass hair in the food. Disgusting! To further break it down the potatoes were cold, wife had the chiliaquiles, which was cold, she asked for salsa and got marinara. Usually don’t complain on these but STAY AWAY from this dump!

Expensive but VERY tasty breakfast buffet. Debbie was our server, but I felt she was cold — she was overly direct in her communication style and lacked warmth (which I expect from all servers). I used to be a server, and have admittedly high expectations for service. She abruptly asked (almost barked) for breakfast vouchers «if we had them…» for all she knew we were locals. She did the thing where you hurriedly hold your hand out and bend your fingers as if to say «gimme, hurry.» The problem was we had a stack of $ 10 vouchers, and didn’t know the total. We asked for the amount and she said «I don’t know,» almost annoyed. We had to tell her, ok… So go give us the total… She then tallied it up and told us the total over the railing. It was weird, and rude!
I am convinced she pegged us as resort guests from the start, which we were, and just expected vouchers and an insufficient tip. We tipped her the full/​standard amount on the total (pre-​voucher price), but had she smiled, slowed down and showed some warmth, it would have made a huge difference and I MAY have given this 4 – 5 stars on Unilocal.However, most of the overall experience when dining out is the service. As such, Rico’s is left with a 3-​star-​rating from me. It’s important to note we were one of three tables at 9:15am on a weekday — so it’s not like she was in the weeds. I will add, to her credit, we lingered after paying and she checked back with us — and we asked for to-​go cups for coffee, which she obliged.
So… Let’s talk about the details of the restaurant and the food. This is on the edge of The Squaw Peak Hilton Resort, and it’s actually a mid-​tier modern Mexican restaurant. It’s nicely appointed and we were promptly greeted and seated by a nice young man. The menu was limited but had great options! Most entrees are $ 13, plus coffee and drinks are $ 3/​each, while the buffet is just under $ 17. So if you get a drink, you may as well get the buffet because it includes your drinks.
The buffet was nicely laid out with great FRESH fruit, yogurts, cottage cheese, etc. they have fresh squeezed juices, and cereal. Across from that there is an omelet station with a friendly omelet chef (not sure what else to call him.) I ordered an egg white omelet with veggies and very light oil, and asked for light cheese. He was great in accommodating my requests — sadly I had several pieces of egg shell, but spit them out and it wasn’t a huge deal. I sort of appreciate knowing it was made with real eggs — but would naturally prefer no shells…
They have hot syrup, fresh fluffy pancakes, crispy bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, potatoes, etc. All of it frankly was fresh and perfectly prepared. They had the most incredible oatmeal — it had all kinds of stuff in it (oats, grains, quinoa, etc.). Add some honey, brown sugar and golden raisins and it’s perfect! Oddly, it was SUPER tasty (I’m not usually an oatmeal person). They serve tasty Starbucks coffee — which I loved. Just check your cup… My first cup had a solid teaspoon of grains at the bottom! I dumped it in my water glass before she refilled me and it was fine after that. Then, there’s the pastry station — yum! Super high quality and tasty muffins, croissants, and other carb-​a-​licious treats (plus fruit preserves). One person in our party had the eggs Benedict, and it was frankly delicious!
Net, breakfast breakfast was great (but pricy at nearly $ 17/​pp), and our server was attentive/​took great care of us, but wasn’t welcoming/​warm. The advice I would give Debbie is to simply smile, slow down, and exude some warmth and compassion. It would make for a better experience and probably increase her tips.
If my review and photos were helpful, please let me know with the voting buttons… It encourages me to take the time to write these reviews.

I have visited Rico’s before and now live in the area. My girlfriend and I walked there Friday night thinking a casual drink and a snack might end the week well. Boy were we wrong. Slow and disheveled bar staff, beer coolers behind the bar that are streaked with God knows what and show no recent signs of cleaning. A sticky bar top was the last straw. After one drink and having to send up s flare to get my bill we left and walked across the street for a nice meal. As a Hilton Diamond I find this place totally unacceptable for a resort of this type and intend to make this known to Hilton. Avoid this place until they fix it up!

2.5 stars.
Came in for breakfast since it is at our hotel (convenient) and was one of a few places that could easily accommodate our very large party (12 adults, 7 kids). I wasn’t expecting much, since most of the reviews are middle of the road, but still left feeling a little underwhelmed.
Service was good and I appreciate that our server was able to handle such a large group without our drinks being empty and plates quickly bussed.
The food was just so-​so. We had both orders off their menu and a few who opted for the breakfast buffet.
The buffet was large — yogurt station, fruit, cereal, made to order omelets, French toast, pancakes, potatoes, eggs, bacon & sausage, assorted pastries.
I had a made to order omelet and it was pretty greasy — way too much cooking oil used. The pastries were alright, potatoes were good. The juice station didn’t have OJ (?). It was kind of your standard, sub-​par breakfast buffet. But the price seemed way too high ($ 16.95); I feel like $ 12.95 would have been a little more appropriate. I did appreciate that kids under 5 were free for the buffet. Helps balance the higher cost of the adults I suppose.
My husband ordered the Nutella French toast and it was good, my mom had the pineapple pancakes and didn’t eat more than 1 because they weren’t very good, and the eggs Benedict my dad ordered was just okay.

My friend and I stayed here for four days and had breakfast here for three. The food was good all three days. The first day the service was excellent. The lady was very polite and on point. The next two days we came back as we have breakfast vouchers included in our stay. Debra was our server and was ok. At the end she mentioned these vouchers cover everything but gratuity which is appreciated. Of course we are going to leave a tip. Today we had her again and said please don’t forget gratuity is appreciated. I find it pretty rude that she has to ask for money especially as the vouchers clearly state gratuity is not included. The first day the lady did not say that and received a generous tip. Debra says this and it honestly makes me not want to tip. I did but was not happy with her. 10+ stars to everyone one else and their attitudes.

I don’t have much to say about Rico’s. The food is okay. The atmosphere is okay. The service is okay. The drinks are okay. It’s just an okay place.
They have a fire pit on the patio and they are dog friendly. That’s a big plus in my opinion because I travel with my dog and she doesn’t get to leave the room often.
I’ve eaten here twice and would return again. Don’t expect to come here and be wowed. I have seen nothing that makes me feel like the staff go above and beyond the monotony of the restaurant business. However, I have not been disappointed by the food or service. Rico’s is neither excellent or poor, it is just okay.