El Loro

If you like beer or tequila this is your place. With an extensive bar menu, I think they want you to get sauced before you eat because the food is not good. Being from Texas, I’m familiar with Tex-​Mex awa authentic Mexican and this place had neither. Cool old railroad station but that’s it. If you go, stick with brew but eat elsewhere.

Despite the food being decent I would never return to this restaurant or recommend it to anyone simply based on the fact that the only is rude, disrespectful and *ss. We tried to move tables and the owner yelled at us saying there were «reservations» (in an empty restaurant. The «reservations» of course never showed up — meanwhile the owner through chairs around the restaurant «cleaning» but was with such child like attitude. Guarantee this restaurant will be closed in a year. Do NOT support this owner.

We had the misfortune of selecting this restaurant at lunch today. The enchiladas Yolanda were positively inedible. The sauce was watery and had a horrible flavor. The rice was flavorless and the beans tasted like they were fresh out of the can. Poor excuse for a meal. Next time I’m wanting to try a different restaurant I will pay attention to the reviews.

I feel like the server deliberately ignored us. Ordered 15 – 20 minutes after being seated. At least the cook was doing his job because the food arrived quickly and tasted good. It still doesn’t make up for the server’s decision to bathe herself in cheap perfume, or that she didn’t check up on us, not even once, until it was time for us to get our check. And even then, we got her to come over because the manager passed our table and we asked for it. He yelled across the empty restaurant to her since she was leaning against the server station drinking her beverage (at least she had one, because our glasses were empty). So by that time we needed more chips and salsa, refills on waters, a to go box, and the check. She delivered on the chips and the check. Never got the other items. First time in my adult life that I didn’t leave a tip. 1.25 hrs to eat in a desolate restaurant. Worst service ever.

Decided to try it out because it’s hard to really screw up Mexican.
Was not disappointed (a welcome change from our Rochester dining experiences thus far). Our server was great, funny and friendly and great with our kid.
The menu was extensive, as they seem to be in Mexican joints. We tried the chorizo nacho app. It was great. Had a wonderful flavor and it was devoured by adults and kid alike.
Ordered fajitas Vallarta which included a variety of meats (chicken, steak, chorizo). All were cooked perfectly and tasted great. Came with the standard fajita accessories and tortillas. Would definitely get this dish again.
Hubs ordered enchiladas or something that involved stuffed tortillas smothered in a green sauce. It was tasty but I didn’t care much for the sauce although Hubs said it was good, seemed a little bland to me but then I only had a little taste whereas he ate the whole plate.
Daughter had the kids menu burger (despite our efforts to steer her towards something more «Mexican»). She liked it and the included fries. It also came with a sundae or sopapilla for dessert. Our waiter generously brought her both and we enjoyed them.
The bad part was at the end when the kid had to pee. Bathrooms are downstairs and we got almost halfway down the stairs when we were hit with some nasty sewage backup stench. We decided to not go the rest of the way down and just wait to pee at home. Fortunately we live nearby!
We would definitely return to El Loro to try more of the menu (and eat more nachos!). Hopefully they will have fixed whatever the issue was downstairs.

Was just ok, would not venture downtown to eat here again. My mom ordered a margarita and it was all syrupy, and when we told the waitress she was upset by the fact it was not good and my mom did not want it or any other drink. That was our only complaint with our order, the food came out as ordered, it was just that we have eatened at other restaurants with much better food.

The chips were gluten free and tasted ok. The fresh margaritas were pretty good and didn’t taste like there was alcohol at all. Ordered a grilled tilapia which came with salt/​pepper and was cooked perfectly and had a great flavor. The salsa was the only gf sauce.

I ignored all the bad reviews due to the inviting patio. And it always seemed to be occupied by smiling customers! I ordered a big burrito on special, the daily special. came swimming in a white sauce that was bland. The burrito was bland. The glob of guacamole was teaspoon sized.
I ordered a coors light or something on draft. I had to ask how much it was. She indicated an area on the menu with pricing, but it was not clear. There were choices for every size BUT a pint. I asked for 16oz, a pint. I could see people drinking pints at other tables. She brought me a 22, looking proud.
This place is indeed as bad as they say. Skip it.

worst food ive ate so bland and the price i paid was horrible i left feeling so disapointed, and the service sucked it took forever to order and get our food

My wife and I ate lunch here last week, and I made a mental note to write a review, because it was memorably bad. Service was great, fine, but who cares if they bring your food on time if that food is tastelessly bland and a poor imitation of genuine Mexican fare? We should have checked Unilocal first, as I see many others had a similar experience.
I ordered a taco and a burrito, and my wife had some enchiladas. Yuck. Everything that could possible have been frozen or canned was frozen or canned. I would have preferred a Swanson TV dinner.
Sadly, they will be out of business soon, unless Robert Irvine does an episode of «Restaurant Impossible» here, and shows them why canned and frozen is no way to make it in the restaurant biz, unless you’re a giant corporate chain (which, Yuck anyway, right?).
I don’t like to write such negative reviews, but Rochester, Minnesota is too large and fast-​growing a town to support Mexican this bland. Maybe they could move to Faribault?

On Cinco de Mayo you would think that a Mexican restaurant would be prepared for a crowd. Here you would be wrong. Waited to be seated more than 45 minutes even though there were empty tables both inside and out. Several in the party got the wrong order or partial order. Also, when we we’re ready to leave we didn’t get our check, so we went to the register. We we’re asked what we had, we could easily have told them anything and no one would know. While we waited to pay, I am sure more than a dozen people left without being served.

I’m not even sure what to say, other than «HATED IT!» (spoken using ‘Men On Film’ voice).
The service was bad, and the food was just atrocious. This might have been the very worst meal I’ve ever had in my entire life… and I spent 4.5 years in college existing solely off of Hamburger Helper and Maruchen ramen. How this place can be in business is just completely beyond me.
The fact that it was 90% vacant at 6:30 pm on a Saturday night should have been our first clue to run for our lives. The fact that our stupido server couldn’t get the drink orders (4 waters, 1 michelada, 2 margaritas on the rocks) right was the second clue.
My meal was «vegetarian combo E», consisting of a bean burrito, quesadilla, and enchilada. It made me so depressed that I wanted to go home and kill myself. Everything was smothered in this plastic «nacho cheese» sauce that you know damn well was created in a laboratory, contained no actual dairy ingredients, and came straight out of a can. There was not a single vegetable to be found. Not even a sprinkling of cilantro. Everything was just beige and plastic. My boyfriend got the «seafood» enchiladas, and because we were with my parents (and because his manners are far better than mine), he said it was good… until we were alone and able to lament about how BAD of a meal we’d just suffered through. If our server had ever come back and asked us how our food was, I’m sure I would have found a creative and scathing way to report my true feelings, but that never happened, because as I previously said, the service here sucks.
Don’t…just don’t.

If you like Mexican cuisine, or any kind of food for that matter, avoid this place at all costs. It may be the worst restaurant in Rochester at the moment, and that’s saying a lot given the intense competition for that distinction. But, one must admit that they are very creative in their ineptitude. For example, how can one’s food be cold when the plate is too hot to touch? This requires a resourcefulness that has to be admired and respected and makes me think they could have designed the heat shields on the space shuttle. I recently had the Speedy Gonzalez for lunch, but Speedy has obviously blown out both knees. It took forever and reminded me that the only thing worse here than the food is the service. How this place manages to stay in business is one of the greatest mysteries of our time.

Icy salsa, stail chips, and a waitress who didnt even know what a taco was all contributed to a terrible experience. She literally had to ask us three times what we ordered and still screwed it up. The food was blah. Never again. Go to Taco Bell.

I like this place most of the time. They have 2 for 1 margaritas but depending on whos working the bar they can be very weak. The atmosphere is nice, we like to sit outside on the patio where we can watch the traffic and the goings on of the police at the government center, kids like that. The food is pretty good, chips are fresh, thin and crisp. The service can sometimes be very slow.

Went to El Loro for the 1^st time, and all in all it was just okay. We were expecting a little more «authentic» Mexican food but El Loro came up a bit short. We started with the chips and salsa, which are complimentary of course. The salsa was good, but the chips were a little almost stale tasting. Not that fresh, and they weren’t warm. We like warm chips. We did order a small cheese dip for the chips, which we did enjoy. I ordered the enchiladas rojas, and my wife order the mushroom quesadillas. My enchiladas were simply okay. They didn’t have the intense flavor of other establishments that we’ve been too. My wife’s quesadillas were good she said, but the menu was a bit misleading. The menu made no mention of onions in her quesadillas and there were a ton of them! It would have been nice to know this ahead of time! The atmosphere of El Loro’s was nothing special, and their prices were average. I’d say try the place once to at least form your own opinion. Will we be back… maybe. We might give them one more shot by trying some different menu items.

I had a hard time judging the rating. The restaurant has changed names 3 times in the recent history. But nothing has rally changed. I love the hard shells tacos, rice and chips/​salsa. If it was just my husband and I, they’d get a higher rating. But, the kids food isn’t that great. My daughter does not like going. The hamburger tastes like a non-​beef frozen patty. I like that the kids stuff comes with a dessert now, but not good enough. I’ll be back, but not as often as I would like to.