El Charro Cafe

Our waitress was delightful and the service across the board was excellent. The chips, salsa and guacamole were all yummy. While the atmosphere and service is great the food is just ok. Not that it’s bad, it just isn’t special. I didn’t have that experience like I have had at a few Mexican restaurants where I walked away thinking, «wow, the meat was particularly delicious or the sauce tasted homemade and perfect.» Again, there is nothing wrong with the cuisine here but it won’t blow you away. I would come back.

Easily the BEST Mexican food I’ve ever had. Delicious! Our server (Rosa) was wonderful and the food was very good! Tortilla chips are so good too. Highly recommend!

Party of 5 on a Monday early afternoon. Service was HORRIBLE! When we were seated, there was a ¹⁄₃ of a plate of chips with a small side of salsa. After placing our drink order, we waited a few minutes before ordering. I thought it was odd that soap spread were playing at the bar, later that turned out to gauge how long we were waiting for our food! Turns out someone came to refill our chips once, then our drinks & chips were empty while we waited for one hour for our food. When the food finally came out, they forgot one entrée. No apologies on the length of time to receive our food or the forgotten entrée. Food was only okay. Had to chase someone down to get drink refills. We had to wait another half hour to get someone to bring our check. Again, no apologies from any of the staff. No one ever came by to see if we needed anything. Overall an unpleasant experience. Thankfully we were in good company or the waiting would have been unbearable. We will not be revisiting this restaurant on our next trip to Tucson.

The food was great. We ordered shrimp and steak fajitas which were cooked to perfection and the chips and salsa were delicious as well. I feel like the Spanish rice needs a little upgrade but overall it was great service and great food. :)

The food was fabulous. The service left something to be desired. Because the carne seca is their most popular item, I ordered it even though I try to limit how much beef I eat. It was absolutely delicious. Flavorful, ever so slightly crunchy. And enough left over for dinner tonight. My husband had the carne colorado burrito. Filled with beautiful chunks of meat, perfectly spiced, and satisfying for his large appetite. Great margaritas also! The only downside is the service was really slow, especially for a very early afternoon with only a handful of tables in use. And it is a bit pricy, at least for lunch. In the end, we will be back, however!

To be honest we left before we were served. We were sat at a table, given some chips and 1 tiny ramekin of salsa for 4 people. Then we waited, waited, waited– talked about leaving, waited– searched for a server that might be interested. Unrolled utincils out of boredom– nice fancy cloth napkin wrapped around a dirty fork. Decided after reviewing menu that it looked over priced. And the 4 of us walked out. Sunday noon– not very busy at Sunday noon. Walked out frustrated. Seemed on the fancy side. Despite lots of good reviews– service was absent. Plus the groddy dirty fork made us inspect all of our utencils, which seemed OK. Had we been given water we would have stayed. Did not feel too bad about eating a few chips,. We would have stayed if given water or at least a drink order. SO Sunday not busy– waiting and waiting — not sure why servers disappeared. Maybe a good fancy place. No lunch discounts– evening meals, so be hungry. Decided on Tucson Tamale very nearby.

I was excited to find a highly rated Mexican restaurant in Tucson near my hotel. El Charro has been in business since 1922 so they must be doing something right.
I sat at the bar and ordered a margarita while I perused the menu. Carne seca looked interesting. I’ve read about it but never tried it. It’s sun dried beef that’s then shredded and cooked with onions, peppers and tomatoes; something like jerky reconstituted for tacos. I have a rule for Mexican restaurants though which is «I will judge you by your chile relleno.» What to do? No worries. I found a combo with both and made my request.
Chips and salsa were fine, with a nice little kick. When my food arrived I was puzzled. It was the carne seca plate and not the combo I ordered. Okay, I’ll take that, rather than send it back and wait. My server apologized and comp’d the relleno I had been expecting. She handled the mixup perfectly well.
Carne seca was described as a flavor explosion. I definitely sensed a little bit of a pop. It was flavorful and good in tacos.
My chile relleno was just okay. Lots of cheese, not much of the crisp exterior I usually expect. Red sauce was good.
House margaritas; Pretty light. No buzz. No Bueno.
Overall, pretty good but I was disappointed with the margarita and relleno.

Always good food! My favorite would be the carne seca cheese crisp and the carne seca burro! Must have when I’m in town.

I’ve eaten at this El Charro location twice — once when I was here house-​hunting a couple of years ago and again a couple of weeks ago. I don’t recall what I ordered on my first visit, but I do remember enjoying it. However, on this second trip I ordered the El Charro Carne Seca burro «Enchilada-​style» with green sauce and I definitely didn’t care for it. Even though it was enchilada style, it was still just dry, dry, dry and hard to eat. The margarita was great though!

I personally like their downtown location better. I always order their horchata but the one downtown makes it better. They even garnish the horchata with fried tortilla chips with honey downtown. The sopa tortilla is delicious and they have great lunch specials. I always order the chicken enchiladas. Service was awesome here. Not a big fan to the décor at the oro valley location.

I had no idea there was another El Charro in Tucson. Specifically way up north Tucson. Well glad I was using my Unilocal app when I was in the are and found it.
First off you might have a drive in the parking lot for a little bit till you actually find the restaurant. But hint it’s where all the cars are parked. Says something about the popularity of it.
From my immediate observation this location is very new and modern compared to downtown location. This one is done up very nice and seems very classy.
The food though is just as good! We had the carne seca plate and my wife had the carne seca chimi. Wow everything was great!!! I would, recommend not getting chase on the chimi though because they ended up charging about $ 1.50 for the extra cheese which really wasn’t needed. We ordered it with red sauce and the combination of the sauce with the chimi was outstanding. As you can tell we love us some carne seca!

The waitress was jawning while taking our Order. A smile would have been nice. She was constantly hitting her butt with the menue, bored waiting for my friend to decide what she wanted.
The House Margaritha was tasteless, I think they forgot to put the alcohol in.
The food was ok, but overpriced.
There are better and cheeper mexican restaurants in Tucson.

Queso Fundido, spinach & mushroom enchilada, 2 mini chimichangas and chicken tinga taco. To drink was a mango and a peach margarita.
Service, food, and drinks were great! Immediately seated, owner came to greet us. Our order was taken promptly and the food came very soon after.
Fun atmosphere during busy happy hour on a Wednesday.

All the food we ordered was great! I had the Chicken Mole Enchiladas. The chicken was in chunks which I dont really like. It would be nice if it was shredded chicken instead. It was a bit dry. The mole was more on the sweet side. The gluten free chicken tenders were a hit with my daughter as they came out on a tray that has seperated areas. My husband had the beed tacos. He said it was alright and he said he should have gotten the chicken. My son just ate the chips and salsa. He loved them. The salsa was great. We also ordered the apple chimichamga. Everyone ate that up. Great atmosphere and nice staff. Service was great too!

I made plans to go to El Charro with friends for Cinco de Mayo. We were so excited because they had drink specials! Unfortunately the drink specials couldn’t make up for the horrible service we received. After 2 ½ hours, we all vowed we would never return. We were brushed off when we checked in for our reservation, we were seated and no one came over until we got up, and found a manager. The poor service continued throughout the meal and reminded me why I rarely eat here. The food is good, but not good enough to make me want to ever put up with such bad service again.

Came here for a late lunch around 1:15pm; there were maybe 4 other tables. The service was SLOW. We ordered drinks (husband’s birthday) and it took at least 20 minutes. We ordered our food at the same time as the drinks and the food arrived 45 minutes later and the order was incorrect.
The drinks were not good. The margarita was the worst ever and the sangria was close behind.
After getting the correct order, the food was very mediocre.
We will not be coming back.

$ 35 for two people: one beer, seafood enchiladas, and fish tacos.
We’ve eaten at El Charro before.
It’s the first time to eat at this location. We were seated and waited a bit for a server to show up. After observing, it appears there are no assigned wait areas – whoever is available waits on your table. Menus were provided, and chips & salsa shortly thereafter. The chips were oozing and slick with grease. Luckily, there’s an urgent care center next door. We requested a new bowlful to avoid having to visit there. The food was decent but I’ve had better fish tacos at other local restaurants. If it wasn’t for the gift card a friend gave us, we probably wouldn’t have eaten at El Charros more than once just to say we tried it. It’s a Tucson tradition but it’s overpriced for the quality and service you get.

I’ll keep this brief. Credited with the invention of the chimichanga, you can’t go wrong with the Carne Asada burro, chimichanga style.
Service: ³⁄₁₀
Our waitress was absent for most of our meal. Salsa portions are a bit ridiculously small, so we were definitely begging others for a top-​off.
Décor: ⁵⁄₁₀
Not a fan of the cluttered interior, clashing styles, and glared out TV photo frames too glared or choppy to utilize.
Food: 7.5÷10
My party had a few issues, keeping this from a perfect score. But not everyday can be a perfect day…

Definitely a classy, higher-​end type of place with beautiful southwestern décor and artistic lights hanging above. This is a great place to take a date.
I’m more of a «Mexican grub» type. I wasn’t crazy about the high prices, but I can’t deny the food was pretty good. I *LOVED* the green chile quesadilla. Mmmm. :)
Go here with confidence. Enjoy.

The food saved this review. It was very good… got their Carne Seca Chimi, which translates to «dry meat». Which that is exactly what it is. Quite different, but tasty. We also got the Cerveza Fish Tacos, which were REALLY good. Margs were also good… not too sweet. But we went on a Monday night and had a 45 min wait and they ran out of pork and guac in the prime dinner hour, so that was a little frustrating.