by John R. on I have not had a cheesesteak in 25 years so when it was time to give it a try I thought I would go to the source, well, at least the source across the street from the originator. I see comments about the rude staff. I did not see anything like that and my hallucination is if you communicate and are not rude to them you are not going to have a problem. You also need to keep it quick - supposedly this place can pump out up to 4,500 steaks in a day so if you are going to waste time no one is going to be happy. For the food. Hands down better than Pat's and that is Whiz-Wit in boths cases. Why four stars? They are next door to Pat's and I prefer the steaks from Geno's -- that alone gives them four stars.
by Matthew W. on So the service is good but the food was terrible. We had a big group of about 20. But the dinning room is enormous so 20 seems fine here. Again even with 20 we had really attentive staff. The food however was bland, and really poor. I ordered shrimp over rice with "grilled" veggies. Having worked in restaurants, if you can't get the veggies right you aren't going to t get the rest correct. The veggies were like mush. Honestly not grilled. It was supposed to be zucchini, squash, carrots and broccoli. But instead it tasted like something from one of those freezer bags you ate as a kid. Nothing like grilled fresh veggies ruined by some overzealous prep cook who has no idea how to prepare veggies. That was the highlight of the dish...mushy and bland. Next we had a bed of rice that was supposed to have grilled onions on top of it. Did not have the onions. The rice was also overdone and sloppily spooned on to the plate. The six or so shrimp where placed on the rice and were supposed to look good. Unfortunately they were all done to different temperatures. The worst part was that the shrimp all tasted like chlorine. Chlorine is used to kill bacteria in shellfish. This means that they are purchasing and using really cheap fish. My neighbor sent back his fish tacos because they tasted fishy. Oh man, really bad sign for a new place to be cutting corners on the food. Also the chips tasted like they came out of a bag. Not in Austin please. Good chips and salsa are easy to do and should be expected. It really seems like they spent too much on the opening and are cutting corners in the kitchen to pay off the expensive space. If Gloria Estefan is really the owner she should be embarrassed by what her kitchen is turning out. This had nothing to do with Latin America and way more to do with bad American chain restaurant pretending to be something its not.
