Uncle Julio's

It's really hard for me to not love a Mexican restaurant. Like, really hard. But, I can't sit here and honestly tell you to give this place a try. I just can't do it.

This was my second visit here after a 6 month break and again, I need to learn from one bad experience and give it a rest. Alas, I tried Uncle Julio's again to celebrate a birthday.

- Service - We never had waters refilled until we practically begged. This is not totally our servers fault, as they don't seem to have a team mentality happening here. If you're not our server, but you see all our waters are on E, it makes sense to fill them up. [insert extreme sass]

- Floors - I complained last time that our whole group almost bit it because the floor had some sort of slippery substance on it. This time I wore fairly flat loafers (dad style) and damn near bit it again. This was pre-margarita, so definitely no clumsy enhancements. I told the hostess "Yikes, these floors are slippery!" She gave me a valley girl "Yeah!" as if I just gave a compliment. Don't you dare try to blame these adorb loafers, either.

- Atmosphere - It's alright. I think they've got a pretty rad patio, but ya know, 20 degrees isn't really ideal patio weather. They sat all the high number tables so close together that servers kept running into seats like they were playing Pac-Man for the first time.

- Food - Chips and yellow queso were wonderful. Still not digging that smokey, warm salsa. Warm as in temperature, not as in flavor. The hand rolled tamales were quite tasty, and you get 4 of them, so you may want to share. Our table ordered the chocolate pinata, which they said was good for "3 people." Don't fall for this lie. It was easily shared among our table of TWELVE, which, thank goodness because it's $30. I totally dug the pinata and this would be the only reason I return.

- Drinks - I had the El Jefe Margarita and really enjoyed it. Fortunately one drink managed to last the entire time because we were never asked if we wanted another drink.

- Price - Womp Womp. I had tamales, one margarita and was supposed to split the queso, but it somehow ended up on my check. My total was $38.00 pre-tip. Gross. It took 40+ minutes for us to all get our checks so I didn't even have our server fix the queso faux pas. Not my proudest Dave Ramsey moment.

I don't know Uncle Julio personally, but now I know why uncles get such a bad rap.

Just save yourself the stress and expense and go to Ted's.