El Merendero

We were there in the afternoon. The food was delicious and the servings were generous. The staff were friendly and helpful. This is a great place for Mexican food.

Came back year later. Always good!
Come once a year when I’m in town. Friendly staff.

I have been to numerous Mexican Restaurants in the last 20 years both in New Mexico, Ensenada, Mexico and Arizona. Merendero is one of the best. Fresh chunky Salsa, excellent skirt steak, chili Relliano, chimichangas, Fajitas all is good.

El Merendero is by far one of my favorite LUNCH Mexican food spots on the south/​south west side of town! When friends are in town — I take them here. All of their lunch specials are great but I enjoy the Thursday Chicken Flautas Special! Price is reasonable at a little over $ 7 for lunch! Only wish they had a liquor license, but it is what it is?!

The carne asada was great. Food has great flavor and the we got a pretty decent piece of meat. However, there was hardly any rice, beans or guacamole on the side. Besides, it was really cold.
They forgot to bring us the tortillas as well.
My hope is that it was just an off-​day!
I just ordered another carne asada plate to check…
Same!

Visiting Tucson and used Unilocal to find good local Mexican food. The neighborhood looked a little dicey but the restaurant was clean and there were plenty of cars out front. I tried the Chili Rellenos. The whole plate was delicious! My hubby had a taco, enchilada combo and he cleaned the plate. My friend ordered ice tea and it looked and tasted awful! Her taco salad looked like it had a lot of watery soupy stuff at the bottom and very unappetizing but it tasted ok.

If you are in a mood for traditional, authentic mexican dish, look no further. This place has it all. What this place is lacking in ambiance, it fully makes it up with food, taste, quality and value. You won’t be disappointed.

Great place! The food taste so good and everyone working here was polite and nice. Each meals starts off with chips and salsa just like most Mexican restaurants, but the salsa is way more flavorful here. The tacos were little flavor bombs stuffed with meat, tomatoes, and onions. Just a great place to grab a relaxed meal.

Server was friendly and gracious. Three servers were working and 2 tables were occupied. She could work anywhere instead of a place which seems to capture random business. Food was average @ best. Unsure why ratings so high. Hard to find decent Mexican right in the area while traveling which is baffling.
Carne Asada soft tacos were dry and tasteless. Red chili burro was not bad but could have done w some more seasoning. Wouldn’t rush back.

Best service! This traditional Tucson Mexican locally owned converted a long time age from an A & W Drive In can’t be beat! Love ala carte plus breakfast lunch and dinner choices. Try it!

Not very good. Rice is instant, beans have too much fat, tortillas have too much fat they almost have a tough cellophane look & under cooked. I had steak Fajitas. Not what I would call Fajitas, about 6 – 8 thin, short strips of steak, lots of onions, bell peppers, they were good & the sour cream & guacamole. Not the place for fresh, healthy Mex food. No bottled water! Service was good after I asked to them to wipe the table, slow bringing the check.

The average rating of this restaurant is 4 stars? Really?
Really?
South Tucson Unilocal’ers you need to head north and experience why people equate Tucson with great food. It ain’t here.
I’ve yet to find a really good restaurant in south Tucson and El Merendero continued to validate my findings.
The service is very friendly. That’s the only nice thing I can say.
I saw oysters on the menu (we’re inTucson remember) so I asked the waitress where the restaurant gets them and are the fresh? She said she didn’t know but would go ask the owner. She came back a few minutes later and said they are very fresh and imported. Imported, from where?, I asked.
She said, «they are not from here, they are imported from somewhere else».
She was very nice so I went ahead and ordered the carne asada. I asked about their drink menu.
Nope!
All they have is a very small selection of beer and pre-​frozen margaritas.
It went down hill from there. Chips from a convenience store, super salty carne asada, guacamole that is mostly watered-​down sour cream.

Their chile relleno plate is pretty good. Lots of cheese and big portions. My boyfriend didn’t like the tacos though. He ordered chicken hard tacos and although they had good flavor, they were very greasy and had ground chicken instead of shredded. (At least we think it was ground chicken.)
The waitress could tell he didn’t like his meal and she was very apologetic and nice. She took off the cost of our drinks.
All in all, an ok place for me, but I probably wouldn’t return. He definitely wouldn’t.

I was in Tucson on business and went to Unilocal one more time for help with dinner. My partner didn’t eat seafood, so sushi was out. I found this place and it was AWESOME… My pal ate «Mexican chicken fried steak» it was delicious. I had SEAFOOD… Campenchana was fantastic here. Service was great, atmosphere was authentic and best of all, the food was amazing. No cocktails (I was hoping for a margarita) but beers are there to accompany your meal.

Another great meal, met the wife here for lunch and their food is always good.
I had the shrimp cocktail, and my wife had the daily special chicken chimichanga enchilada style.
Food was great, service was fast, and prices are great! Their food has so much flavor and consistent; therefore, this place is always a good meal.

I have been to El Merendero twice and have never walked out satisfied.
When it comes to their chips in salsa, I would rate it mediocre. The pico is very watered down and the other is alright. The chips are a hit or miss, you’ll either get them fresh or very stale!
First time I went I ordered their Ceviche, which tasted like it had been sitting there for a couple days. The tortillas were the only part of my meal that I ate.
Second time I ordered cheese enchiladas, which I was going to get a quesadilla but the waitress told me to get the enchiladas instead. She did however, warn me they were made with chipotle sauce, not regular enchilada sauce. My first problem was that they were not cheese, but she had brought me chicken enchiladas but whatever I love chicken too. The «chipotle» sauce was wayy too creamy, honestly it was disgusting to me and I love chipotle sauce!
There was also a father and mother slapping their teen around for who knows what. It’s just not a place you want to be for a dinner or lunch.
But my step mother loves the tortilla soup. their cheese crisps are pretty good too but its not somewhere i’ll ever be coming back to.

This restaurant was ok, but nothing special. The tacos and enchiladas were pretty genetic, but you could really taste the chile in the enchilada sauce.
We ordered a tiny cup of cheese for my daughter (wanted ½ the size of the tiny salsa cup) and they charged us $ 3 for ‘queso.‘
That is technically correct, but that was a lot to pay for the amount of cheese given.
All in all, is was ‘meh.’

Lunch special on tuesday is enchiladas and it was delicious. My husband had milanesa said it was good. Kids had carne asade quesadillas and could not have been happier.

Wow. The things you notice when you are having a poor dining experience.
So, I have been here a couple of times now. However, I hadn’t been back for a while because I found during my previous visits that the service and the food were both inconsistent.
On this visit, I noticed much of the same that concerned me before: an absentee server, stale chips and watered down salsa. I imagine that the restaurant caters to many of those people who are merely looking for a cultural experience. That’s cool. Sometimes you need a starter restaurant when you’re trying to break in to a particular type of cuisine.
Still, there are couple of things that I like about the restaurant. In particular, they have great specials — especially their daily lunch specials, which include seafood specials as well. I also love the natural light. I find that this place is great for lunch, and maybe dinner.
Now, back to this current visit and the reason why I’m giving this restaurant an abysmal number of stars.
There was old salsa caked to the side of the bowl, «sandy» seats and drive by waiter service. My server even asked me from a table over if I was ready to order.
I went with a half-​dozen oysters. I told her that I would keep the menu because I wanted to order something later. The oysters were meaty but served improperly — stacked. I have never experienced this before and it ruined the oysters. Not only did the leftover residue on the bottom of each stacked shell muddle the oyster beneath, the liquor from most of them drained out because the were haphazardly placed. What a bummer.
Finally, I just decided to call it a day. But I couldn’t find my server anywhere. So I just decided to leave my cash on the table and leave.
On the way out, I told the busser that my cash was on the table and thanked him. As I was backing out of the parking lot I heard someone yelling at me, «you didn’t pay me!» Ahhh! There’s my server, yelling at me (read: microaggressions). I let her know that the money was on the table, at which point she gave me the most embarrassed look in human history and apologized.
Well, that experience does it for me. I will be taking my hard-​earned money to other wonderful Tucson establishments.

This place was frickin’ amazing! Some of the best, if not THE BEST mexican food I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot of mexican food.
First off, the service was very polite and helpful, recommending some excellent dishes. I had the tortilla soup, which had everything under the sun: tortilla strips, avocado chunks, sour cream, cheese globs, other good stuff that I don’t even know about. My brother got the cheese soup, which was really good also.
I also had a shrimp quesadilla, which was really delicious, due to the spices they put on the shrimp, nice blend of pepper and other unknown spices. But the cous de gras, was the chiles, stuffed with shrimp, wrapped in bacon, and sitting in a soy sauce-​esque liquid. UNBELIEVABLE! I have no idea what it was called, but it’s an appetizer, just ask the server.
I would go far out of my way to make a trip back to El Merendero, I suggest you do the same.