Taco Cabana - A Mexican Patio Cafe ripoff Austin Texas

IF you are looking for AUTHENTIC TEX-MEX FOOD, this place is NOT as it is represented ! Sure, it has "cheap" prices but the food at this location and throughout town --except for the ones on Burnet Road and Research Blvd. -- is TERRIBLE!!!!

I guess you are supposed to swill enough watered-down Margaritas and overproced BEER to make you so drunk you don't care what you are eating! Well, that's NOT the way I do business!

Flour tortillas are nice for breakfast but that's all there is -- too bad! Be careful while you are eating because I found parts of plastic wrappers for the "pre-fab" meat, etc. and the idiots in CORPORATE wherever that is right now --it USED to be in San Antonio, Texas the home of good Tex-Mex cuisine but who knows where it is now -- STILL haven't figured out that frijoles refritos are one of the MAIN criteria of how a REAL TEX-MEX or MEXICAN restaurant is judged.

Sometimes, the beans are sour. Sometimes they have white and bluish fuzz on them. Sometimes they have the watery consistency and appearance of ......( censored) and other times, they taste like stale pork grease was dumped in them. When they have a thick coating of cheese on the top, that is USUALLY a sign that not all is well with them! Good frijoles TASTE fresh, slightly salty with a firm, non-runny consistency that can be scooped up on a fork or a tortilla and they usually do not have foul-smelling bubbles that burst around the edges!

The lettuce is particuliarly foul and rancid tasting and you can choke on it as I nearly did. I wish Cesar Chavez was still around to urge another LETTUCE BOYCOTT because I was expecting to find insect pieces,etc. in this.

At this particuliar location, there are some homeless persons living nearby under a bridge and in the green belt on the nearby hike and bike trail.They liked to come over and AGGRESSIVELY panhandle from anyone stupid enough to sit and think they could enjoy eating on the Mexican patio of the Mexican patio cafe. They would also grab any alcoholic drinks and run like **** wtih them. On the occasion that I was there, I saw a person from there pull and edged weapon on a young Hispanic couple while seated in my truck 's passenger side wtih the handicapped permit on it and the guy demanded money from me, pulled the knife on me and tried to break out my window with the hilt and then he kicked the side of my door with what appeared to be steel-toed shoes. I reported it to the police but when I wrote to the restaurant HQ in San Antonio, they did not offer to repair the damage to my truck or provide better security. It took me a year before I could even drive by one of those restaurants without having a panic reaction.

Even better was to see the people reaching over the patio fence and grabbing a handfull of whatever is on your plate, leaving dirty looking residue behind and running like .... for their hiding place. I would have bought the guy a meal if he had just asked. But he didn't. The guy who pulled the knife on me didn't even want food. He wanted "a rock" and he was arrested by the cops after they had had repeated complaints about him. ( By the way, he was an older white man about 60 years old!)

There was NO security when I tried to eat here.Even worse than the WATERED DOWN SODAS that are barely drinkable --which I guess is to get you to drink the alcoholic beverages instead ( and get a DWI arrest)--- and worse than the hungry AGGRESSIVELY PANHANDLING PERSONS ( who smell so bad, who can eat anyway?) is the HORRIBLE MUSIC!!!!!!! IT IS ALWAYS PLAYED SO EAR-SPLITTINGLY LOUD YOU GET A HEADACHE FROM JUST BEING IN THERE! IT IS THE MAIN REASON I DON'T EAT THERE ANYMORE.

Mexican music is not played here! It is the WORST of the WORST bargain-basement trash in English, undefined genres that sound like rejects from American Idol singing what might be country-western music, Meringue Amarillo with lyrics so filthy that our discotechas here in the REAL Mexican part of town REFUSE to sell that kind of music even if it is from Puerto Rico and is in Spanish; and then they break it with a goofy guy making a commercial for Taco Cabana in English!

MEXICAN CAFE? Not hardly.

AND, IF YOU ARE AFRICAN AMERICAN, BETTER CHECK THIS OUT:

"Charles Byrd, aka NOOK, is one of four young African-American men who say they were refused service in January by the Taco Cabana restaurant on (Irony Alert!) Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. A press release from the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) says the quartet were told that they could not eat in the dining room of the restaurant, which is open 24 hours a day, and that while they were there, "a number of Anglo and Hispanic customers" were served, wherein Taco Cabana employees called the police, who detained them briefly. The TCRP has issued a lawsuit against the restaurant, the eighth since the organization began their "Equality Under the Law" campaign in 1999. The lawsuit seeks "better training for Taco Cabana employees, a court injunction against further discrimination, and appropriate compensatory and punitive damages." (The Taco Cabana corporate office in San Antonio said they had no information on the matter at press time and were looking into it.)- comes from the Austin Chronicle, the enterainment tabloid of Austin, TX in the Dancing About Architecture columnBY KEN LIECK. that was written in 2001 and so far NO PROGRESS MADE HERE!

Anonymous
Austin, Texas
U.S.A.