On The Border

Awwwww.
It’s a sad, sad day.
So I was just made aware (total delay) that this place up and closed a few months ago. I’m led to question this decision. WTF is up with good places NOT being able to stay in business? This is disheartening.
Thinking back, I recall the location in Temecula closing years ago. Followed by OTB in Culver City @ what is formerly known as «The Bridge» closing as well and directly afterwards, was the closing of the location just off of the 15 freeway in Corona.
Now…, it appears that this particular branch, previously located within the Terra Vista region of Rancho Cucamonga has followed in pursuit leaving the location in Eastvale (aka «Mira Loma») to serve as the sole successor of this until now, otherwise «booming» franchise.
This blows!!!
Happy Hour at ‘On The Border’ was on point. Drinks were served at a gallop and didn’t by any means disappoint. The chips and salsa could’ve won the «Good Food Award» and customer service was always spot on!
I really feel as if I’m composing a eulogy but once again, I’m pretty bummed by this decision and I’m all the more concerned by the thought of what type of operation is going to be moving into this location.
No doubt a super-​sized Starbux’ or Yogurtland. Better yet; another place alleging to have perfected the currently trending, over-​popularized method (s) of preparing «Louisiana» style boiled crab and shrimp.
I dunno.
Whatever the case. By no means am I affording ‘On The Border’ 1 star. I’m actually impressed by the establishment and if there were one within the area that I currently reside, I’d likely frequent it.
If anything, this 1 star if for the so called «executive decision» that was made to close it —

We check in with the hostess & she states a 15 minute wait for 3 people when there is at least 20 open tables? Hmm understaffed on Saturday night. (that’s money making time FYI).
Wow just our first time and the cook is making some dish with the strongest chilies. Everyone in the bar is coughing I had to help the waitress ventilate the place by opening the doors. I feel sorry for the couple with the baby. No manager to apologize? Staff is friendly so far. Lets see how the food is.

We where in last week and they said they had a hiring freeze, we went by today and they had a sign up that thanked customers for their patronage but they are closed.
Out of business

I love coming here just please don’t come in on a Wednesday … OMG the redhead at the bar area is horrible … She takes forever we ordered nachos and a kids chicken strip for dinner we waited to get our meal for 30min just waiting. I have to remember not to come here on Wed … I love the other bartenders that are here any other day except for Wed.

I have been going to OTB for over 10 years but the last 3 or 4 times I’ve gone the service & the food have been very poor. I’m am deeply sadden because my husband & I use to love eating here at least twice a month!
Besides the fact that it is always empty I still have to wait 5 minutes or more to be seated. For the most part they forget to give us menus, silverware & napkins. The last time we went I literally had to go find my own silverware. On more than one occasion I have seen the employees standing around chit chatting about their personal lives «HELLO» very unprofessional. They seem to have a large turn around in employees as well as managers.
The chips were the first thing to go to crap! Then the food quality & portion size changed. Lately they have been bringing me something I did not order or an order from another table. The last time I went I saw 4 different tables complaining to the manager“including me”. The manager was very apologetic but you can tell that they need to get their act together before they lose more customers.
At this point OTB is only good for having drinks at the bar.

Disinterested staff, and who can blame them! No reason to go here to eat. Should be closing soon. Horrible greeting, no experienced servers, food stale and bland. We have been here before, but it has gotten worse each time.
No leadership in this building for sure! The manager must be in the office working on their resume…
Sad. It is a joke of a chain style, cookie– cutter restaurant, and other then free chips and salsa to wash down a margarita, there is no reason to insult yourself by walking in. I will never do it again.

This place is great! Everyone who works here are so nice. My husband & I sat at the bar with another couple and really enjoyed the appetizers Saturday they have .25 wings. We had the nachos, flautas, chicken quesadilla. Everything we ate was good! I would come back.

I came for the Wednesday special, lobster tacos for $ 2.00. Sadly, they were out. It seems that they should not have been out at 1:00 p.m. on the day of their special. The server offered shrimp tacos for the same price. They tasted great. I was quite pleased. Good food at a great price.

A group of local bartenders likes to meet up here for lunch some weekdays for their various daily lunch specials. I’ve been coming along the past few times and really enjoy Nathan our bartender serving us.
I’ve read a lot of bad reviews regarding this establishment but I personally have never had bad service here with Nathan taking care of us. We usually have a few beers and some tacos for lunch and call it a day. Nothing special or extraordinary, but it is a good cheap meal. See you guys on Tuesday for lunch?

The only thing here worth mentioning that I thought was interesting (and enjoyed) was the avacado fries. Everything else was meh. I have had better mexican food for a lot less.

Came for some grub on a Saturday night in December, which is great cause most people are shopping not dinning. Our host was great and our waitress Veronica was excellent. As for the food, the kid ribs were too tough, may have been over cooked or reheated which may have dried it out. The kids Mexican dinner was good. The Del Rio was good except for the fish taco, the flavor was overwhelming like it was too old to eat. The Torta Cubana is good except for the pickles inside. Not sure if that’s a Cuban thing or a thing here, but I would recommend getting it without the pickles. The Arnold Palmer was ok (pink lemonade) and the actual pink lemonade tasted watered down like it was from a pitcher and not a fountain drink. And of course the bottomless chips and salsa are great, they may be made in-​house.

Service can be slow at times during dinner, then again it «Dinner» but they always seem to keep the chips and salsa coming the staff is friendly plus the food is decent, its not too pricey and if you go during lunch your in and out.

The service (server) in our section was BEYOND SLOW!!! Thankfully we got our drinks quickly, because of the hostess. And the hostess brought out some chips while we waited to have our order taken!!! The queso dip came out rather quick but after waiting 40min for our food to come out with a 2 year old we opted to just get the manager and ask to pay for our appetizer & leave!
The manager was very apologetic saying they were just overwhelmed with tables (our servers section was not full by any means, she was just an incompetent slow server). The manager was kind and handled the situation well offering us free dinner next time we come in which we will probably never do!
To top it off as we are taking to the manager and are leaving the food finally come out but we have completely lost our desire to eat! When we got to our car the family that parked next to us after we had already got there (this was a family of 6 mind you) they were also getting to their car! Curiosity struck my husband so he asked if they ate (we assumed they left cuz of bad service too) but they had already ate their dinner & they were done before we even got our food!!! What the holy hell!!! Our server couldn’t get out a party of 2’s dinner but an entire family of 6 got their food & ate before we even got ours!!! That is just unacceptable!
We will NEVER EVER go back to this On The Border! We can see why they have a 2 star review!!!
Just terrible!!!

Holy mother of @ucking Christ, I’m about to call the cops, this shit is criminal. The servers are all stressed out, yelling in the kitchen, meals are taking an hour plus, and I’m sure their @ucking with people’s food at this point the entire restaurant is complaining. I’m not paying for this meal, if the server blames the kitchen, maybe ill tip that.

Reading past reviews and found it interesting that the reviews are about service, servers, or the bar. The food here is not good Mexican food, it is the typical blanded and spiced down to the fast food lover masses type of food. It would not surprise me if the food here may even be mass produced somewhere else and just heated up in the kitchen. You could tell the chips were opened from a bag and i think Pace salsa is better than what they served.
I ordered the Del Rio trio –Fish Taco, chicken enchilada, gaucamole tostada. I took two bites of the fish taco, two bites of the enchilada and the same with the tostada, and pushed my plate away. The waitress came by and asked if i was done and took my plate! Terrible.
On a scale of 1 – 10 with ten being best, i give On The Boarder a 2. NOT GOOD FOOD!

They have alot on their menu, great variety! Prices OK. And hmm they are pretty slow but probably because they are away from the other resturants up on Foothill Blvd. It’s almost hidden! Dislike that its real deep into Foothill.
Our server was really attentive. Ordered a soda, and gave me a water on the side just in case. I love it when servers do that. Refilled with out me asking, and with the chips and salsa too. Oh… and he was super HOT. (lol) I think his name was Rod, Me and my sister called him Hot Rod lol
Food came out fast, and service is great.

UPDATE TO PREVIOUS REVIEW ON 3-​09-​2013
So, since I received a bag in the Sunday paper for a free meal and a bag of chips, I thought I’d give it a go AGAIN.
Well, I must say, ALLISON was great. Out of all the previous times I had been there, not one of those lousy servers mentioned anything about a lunch menu. Not Allison. She was right on it. She was very pleasnat from the get go. Spoke as I walked into the restaurant. Smilled like she wanted to be there. Offered conversation. Even spoke and played with my son. All of this EVEN after I mentioned that I had a coupon for a FREE meal. She still smiled. No eye rolling, no talking under her breath and no ATTITUDE. Now that’s what I call service.
Maybe, just MAYBE, I might go there again. We shall see.
WAY TO GO ALLISON!
P. S. I still like the food. Beef brisket tacos are rather yummy.

Happy Hour:
We did happy hour in the bar area. Our server Chelsea was so cool. For appetizers we had the empanadas and the guacamole. Drinks: the $ 3.00 margaritas. Food was good, wouldn’t say great but good enough. And for $ 3.00 margaritas all day, how can you complain?
Will return.

It’s difficult negatively reviewing a place after one visit, especially when you have visited this chain in a different location and had positive results.
The food wasn’t the bad part,.Really, it was just the experience along with the food.
After we sat down we proceeded to see an ant on our table. Got rid of it, no prob. Then we aw another, and another. Finally we saw one crawling along our salsa bowl and moved tables.
So we visited during a time when apparently they had an ant problem, so that obviously isn’t going to help a review. Still, when I see an ant crawling in my salsa dish, not only do I want to not eat there but I feel I am owed some sort of apology from the place. Essentially I paid $$$ to eat a meal where every bite came with the realization that I may be eating an insect. I guess I got the feeling that it wasn’t really that big of a deal that we had a bad experience, and in fact it should have been a big deal, especially when you are paying to eat there. We were told they were spraying Windex to get rid of them.
How about calling an exterminator?
Perhaps we should have walked out? I guess, but then you are wasting the food that they had undoubtedly already cooked for you. I didn’t want to screw them out of the cost of our meals. We began seeing the ants after we had ordered.
I should mention my food was pretty good. Chips and salsa were pretty good. Both of the previous statements excluding the fear of eating insect factor.
I like On the Border. I likely won’t be back to this one, however, for a while.

It’s unfortunate to have to give OTB a 1 star but it really lived up to it. First of all, when we walked in there was a funky smell to the place. It wasn’t a food smell, or cleaning smell, it was more like a sewer type funk nastiness. I should have walked out immediately but I didn’t…my mistake!!!
Once seated, we were in nice comfortable booths when all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye the TV was flashing. It was like the plug was loose and it was flashing between on and about to go off for 2 minutes at a time. This proceeded to happen the whole entire time we were there. If you are prone to seizures this is NOT the place for you! This was obviously a huge distraction when trying to enjoy my husband’s company as well.
That aside, we munched on chips when my husband noticed something crawling on our table!!! AN ANT. We thought… hmmm…okay an ant… not the best thing to be crawling on the table but also not the worst. We proceeded to talk and enjoy one another’s company when all of a sudden crawling up the salsa dish was ANOTHER ant!!! At this point, I was done… ants crawling on our table now. We decided to be moved to a booth on the other side of the bar. The waitress seemed to be unaffected by it and said they had been spraying windex to try and keep them away. UM… I’m not expert but windex isn’t going to do anything lady! A few minutes later another table decided to move because they found ants crawling around on their table as well. This was obviously disturbing. The worse part is the manager came over to spray down the tables afterward we had left but NEVER CAME OVER to us to apologize or even say a word about it. I’m sorry but if I was a manager I would have gone over immediately, apologized, and offered a free dessert, meal, appetizer, something. Obviously, the restaurant is going under and the manager is driving the boat.
As for food… there isn’t much to talk about. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t horrible, but I kept wondering what was going to come crawling out of it. Overall, I would NEVER go back and I would NEVER recommend it to anyone. I’m definitely OFF the border and NEVER GOING BACK!!!