Daniel makes little secret of the fact that, after spending some time in San Antonio helping his dad renovate their old house, which included daily breakfasts at Taco Cabana, he holds the Cabana in very high esteem. Whenever we trek to San Antonio, in fact, it’s generally the case that we have to go by Taco Cabana at least once, to experience the holy experience as God intended — IN San Antonio, that, is.
So when yesterday I read Curtis’s blog post about going to the Cabana in Dallas the other day, well, I felt inspired to suggest our own Cabana outing.
ERG.
Here’s the thing. I recognize these two facts to be true:
1) Because there’s no Cabana in Richardson, Plano, Allen or Frisco, the one we typically go to in McKinney serves a larger-than-usual radius of potential customers.
2) Everyone loves Cabana queso. (Except Julie, who doesn’t like cheese, even though she’s from Wisconsin.)
I expect Taco Cabana to anticipate these two things by:
1) Having an adequate number of personnel to serve the demand, and
2) Always having tons of extra queso on hand.
I mean, it’s not like I’m asking for the world here. I just want “fast” food in under 20 minutes and always want to be able to order chips & queso … which, for me, is absolutely imperative if I’m going to enjoy my Taco Cabana experience.
So we get to Taco Cabana last night, and I guess maybe the drive-thru wasn’t working or something, because there were a half-dozen people milling around the front of the store waiting for food. In the dining area, there were — I’m not kidding — FIVE tables of people. *Maybe* one of those tables had food.
I tried to order chips & queso, and was told they were out of queso. OUT?!?! How does Taco Cabana let themselves run out of queso?!?!
We waited 30 minutes — THIRTY!! — to get food that was mostly overcooked, all over-salted, and (in the case of one of Daniel’s bean & cheese tacos) cold. They apparently decided to give us 3 oz. of rationed queso, which was soupy and unsatisfactory. My fajita cabana bowl, in a wild departure from the norm, had jalapenos in it (I totally freaked out when one of those little seeds hit my tongue).
In short, it sucked. REALLY, really sucked.
I’m ready to boycott the McKinney Taco Cabana. And I wish to high heaven that the corporate people at Cabana headquarters in San Antonio would build one closer to us, so at least when it sucks, I don’t have to drive 20 minutes home afterwards.
I sent an email to Taco Cabana informing them that I also will not visit the Mckinney location until these issues are resolved and they build more locations. I would encourage all, espically those who have not yet been to Taco Cabana, to hold off until you are in Austin or San Antonio or unitl they build more locations here. Their food used to be so good and hot and truly not fast food, but lately with the messy resturants, slow service, and cold food it has gotten really bad. It used to be the Dalls locations were just not as good; they got a little better but now they are much worse.