Tijuana Flats

Good food for a reasonable price but the female manager is awful! She talks down to the staff (who are working) in front of customers, walked up to get a refill and she walked away but an employee was nice enough to help, and the list continues. We enjoy coming here and have been for years but something needed to be said about this experience.

Love this place!! just moved here from Orlando last year so glad its here in Sarasota too! Would love them to put it in my work plaza across from Westfield mall on 41 in s.sarasota.we have no food places yet. They are currently building a drive thru Starbucks. Come on be the first restaurant its a great Benderson plaza!

Had a bad experience at Tijuana Flats today.
I was meeting with my Suncoast Precision Machining class for lunch there. When I pulled in the parking lot and parked between the spaces of the yellow lines, a kid ran out of the restaurant and started yelling at me. With my deafness, I had a hard time understanding the rambling gibberish coming out of the kid’s mouth. At first, I find his mannerisms and body language to be intimidating and in borderline beast-​mode. He was also getting up all in my grill. My first instinct was to take him out, stand down the situation, and ask questions later. But the boy took a step back so I realized I didn’t have to bring up my CQC skills training on this kid. I asked him what was the matter and can I be of assistance. After figuring out the words coming out of his mouth, it appears that the kid didn’t want me to park here. I couldn’t figure out what was his problem and why he was singling me out. Then I realized I was blocking the outdoor patio view of the restaurant which I did not realize the setting was there since my previous visits during the winter months. While I was accessing the situation and trying to figure out what to do next, the kid appeared to start having a nervous breakdown. So that made things worst because I had to figure out what he was saying with the gibberish coming out of his mouth while salivating emotionally. So I pulled out of the parking space but I also find myself leaving the parking lot entirely and returned back to Suncoast Technical College probably because the subconscious reasoning inside me was I’d have a hard time opening my wallet to give Tijuana Flats my business after this embarrassing faux pas.
Tijuana Flats, why can’t you folks be nice?
I feel sorry for the kid maybe because he woke up grumpy this morning still a virgin at the age of 17. A part of me wanted to tell him there’s nothing wrong being a virgin while as a teen because that’s supposed to be a good thing to save himself for a nice gentlewoman sometime down the road in his life, like I did when I married at 24 many moons ago.

Such a great place !!! LOVE LOVE LOVE TT!!! Shelby provided exceptional customer service :). The tacos are delish!!! A must go !! :)

Clean, fast, and extremely friendly. It was out first time at one of their locations. They explained the «salsa bar,» menu, and daily specials. Cheap drafts and reasonable prices. We talked to Lee the manager for quite a while in addition, he gave us a cookie dough desert to try which I highly recommend! Lee and the other staff really made our experience. Must try!

Had my first experience at this restaurant this evening. The Stagg was friendly and helpful at explaining the sauce bar and happy hour drink specials. Food was fresh and delicious and reasonably priced. Enjoying being able to sit outside in a relaxed hip atmosphere. The manager came out and introduced himself and asked how our experience was and if he could get us refills, etc. It is refreshing to see pride of the store. Very clean! I will be back to try another selection. The guacamole was some of the best I have had! Well done.

Food came out quickly, the service was great and our party of five were all happy with the food and I think this was the best salsa I’ve ever had. No complaints, and I am hard to please.

The food is great but the staff is even better. We had just arrived and they were very friendly and offered lots of suggestions on where to go and what to do in the area. Very glad we started the trip off with this and the hot sauce bar was awesome!!!

Very good food — but the service is excellent! Have visited 3 different times and have been extremely impressed. They open the door for you as you enter and exit, explain the menu in detail, come to your table for refills and are more pleasant than if you were at a Zagat rated restaurant. For a semi-​fast-​food restaurant, this is the best service I have ever received.

This place is solid. My wife and I love the blackened chicken tacos. The rice and beans are tasty, too… refried or black.

Giving a generous three star because service was really good. Only one of the four of us liked the food though. I was hoping with the great reviews it would have been way better. I felt like I was eating pre-​packaged food. We’re from Texas and maybe that’s why we didn’t like it. Didn’t seem authentic to me at all. Will not go back for sure.

I LOVE this place. This is a must stop (usually twice) on our yearly vacation to Florida. Black Bean Chimi w/​everything (except onions) EVERY time! Love the chips! $ 2 drafts during happy hour. Awesome selection of self-​serve hot sauces. This particular location has WONDERFUL service for kids, grown ups, and dogs! I really wish TF would open in the Cincinnati area!!!

Super cool staff! The colorful walls and ceiling tiles add to the hipster vibe. Throw in the 80’s soundtrack, delicious food, and Taco Tuesdaze deals and you’ve got a great casual place to grab some Mexican food!

Great service, friendly staff, great food. I had an iced tea and noburrito with blackened chicken and took along some hot sauces with the to-​go meal.

For the Tuesday special the food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. The service however was great! I really got the feeling that it’s a rip-​off of Torchys tacos in Austin though, right from the décor to the bland food.

It’s ok not a place I would come back and eat time after time! Is not real authentic Mexican food but it’s okay! Better service

Our experience was fantastic! We came in at 9:30pm on a Saturday night and Mikayla was so awesome! She was courteous & accommodating and her manager on duty, Devin, was quite friendly too. Mikayla’s attention to detail for the guest service was totally unexpected and rad! We will be back!

I was first introduced to T Flats because my son was going to school like two blocks from the original location. There was a crappy recycled vibe, all banged-​up galvanized horse troughs and artistically graffiti’d décor that held up to the rowdy crowds tanking up on $ 5 rice bowls (man, I miss those!) and too much beer. The portions were HUGE. Then they got big backers and sold franchises, and they’ve kind of become hit or miss. It’s especially disappointing when they do a crap job on the murals (holy cow, the one across from Sarasota Memorial has taken some bad turns over the years…) but this location really made an effort and paid for a professional job. I feel badly that the location kind of sucks because they deserve more business.
No, the portions aren’t quite what they were in back in the day, but they’re decent-​sized, tasty, they almost never screw up your order, and I can’t say I’ve ever had so many people ask to refill my drink as they do here. They really want to know if the food is good and they want you to be happy. They seem to dote on everyone.
Now, if they would just make sure to always have my favorite two sauces on the bar at all times, I’d make the trip that much more often.

I’ve had Tijuana flats many many times but thought I’d finally write a review because the service at this location is exceptional! It’s quite easy to order. They bring out the food to your table. You have so many hot sauces to choose from. The food is really Consistently good. I order the dos tacos power lite which means everything with light sour cream and cheese. The beer is cold and compliments the hot sauces.
Now back to the service… This location seems to work like a happy team. They have an attention to detail from opening the door for you when you walk in to making sure you understand the menu. They even check on you several times while you are eating! Thank you gals and guys for making it a place that I look forward to going to!

Holy hotsauce batman! Oh yeah, and the Mexican food is pretty good, too. Came here for a quick dinner and was pleasantly surprised. The salad in tortilla bowl was pretty good. although I found the citrus dressing a bit sweet. My husband didn’t like his burrito («pork was dry, more tortilla than anything else»), but we both loved the guac — a huge serving for a great price!
The service was great, too. They had one person going around every 10 – 15 mins asking if you need refills (which they bring to your table), and you can ask them for sides of stuff, too.
What impressed me the most, though, was the hot sauce selection — they had about 10 (maybe more?) sauces ranging from «oh you’re so cute you think this is hot sauce» to «if I plunge my face in lava it might cool off a bit». I enjoyed trying all the different types of hot sauces — some where fruity, others were smooth. We had a bit of fun daring each other to have the ghost sauce — that stuff has a serious slow burn that spreads! It’s not an instant death, but quite spicy for someone to regularly covers her food in sriracha.