Cinco Mexican Cantina

Friday lunch with some of my favorite coworkers at Cinco set the tone for a great weekend! They offered a great lunch menu or you could order from their standard menu. They offer a full bar stocked with a variety of top shelf brands. Cinco also has a great patio and also offers live music throughout the month so my next visit will need to be during one of the performances. Unfortunately it was too windy to sit on the patio during our visit….our chips kept blowing away and let’s be real the salsa is one of the best around and the chip serves as the vehicle to my mouth. Recommend for a fun environment with classic American Mexican food.

This is probably a pretty good restaurant, but we made the mistake of visiting at the tail-end of a holiday weekend during the great staffing shortage of 2021. The two servers we saw that day were working heroically to server far too many customers, so I won't fault them for struggling to keep up. We had steak tacos al carbon and a chicken taco salad. The salad was fine, but the beef in the tacos was not seasoned well and was a little tough and chewy. I enjoyed the charro beans, but the rice was unimpressive. We liked the chips, but the salsa provided with them didn't have much heat. A side of guacamole that we didn't order, but ate anyway, was quite good. We appreciated that the beleaguered staff maintained a fairly positive attitude in a difficult situation. We look forward to returning again and having a meal that lives up to the standards it looks like this place is more than capable of meeting.

The service was painfully slow and the food surprisingly had no flavor. I have no idea how they can take the flavor out of Mexican food! We came for the patio which was very nice except for a screaming pack of children that were unchecked. One of our meals was made wrong and no servers came by to check so we ate it anyway. But our server seemed concerned at least at the end. The workers were polite just not very skilled at bringing food and drinks which I kind of would like when out to eat. The margaritas looked amazing but we had beers. I don’t recommend unless you don’t mind flavorless food and slow service.

Worst experience ever!!! The service was unacceptable tonight. The manager was not helpful at all. We had to ask for chips and salsa after 10 minutes. We did not get the jalapenos with our cheese dip and then when we finally got them after I asked someone else to help us they charged us for them. We had to ask for silverware, no one ever asked us if our food was good... Portions for taco Tuesday were ridiculously small. I could go on and on don't waste your money here go to CT taqueria at the Halcyon or Cheekys!!!

TL:DR - IF YOU LIKE FLAVOR GO ELSEWHERE. Flavorless food, bad service, good environment. I don't know how you mess up Mexican but this place has it figured out. Food basically tastes like nothing. I ordered the chimichanga. Took only a couple of bites to realize it had no flavor but I resigned myself to deal with it and just not come back. I was mostly finished when I realized that part of the problem was that it was made wrong. The kitchen put the refried beans IN the chimichanga instead of on the side. So now you have flavorless steak, onions and peppers mixed into a flavorless refried bean slurry. I really can't overstate how bland the food is here. Manager apologized and ended up comping the dish. She was nice though she wouldn't admit the kitchen messed up. Instead she explained that if only the server had walked me through ordering I would've been able to order correctly, as though maybe I'd misread the menu which clearly states "served WITH rice and refried beans". I gave two stars because the staff is friendly and the outdoor seating is nice. There's decent shade and the large fans create a nice breeze. The atmosphere is good especially for families since there's a small green area for kids to play. The only downside is that sometimes groups of kids just randomly stalk through the patio area and other times children come shrieking though unchecked. I won't be back. My girlfriend's food was equally bland. I understand restaurant's are struggling to find, train, retain talent so I can forgive the bad service even though they served my girlfriend's Corona w/o a lime, I mean seriously who does that lol!? I just can't excuse the bad food. Literally every component was bland, the corn, the cheese, the enchilada sauce, the tortillas.