Rio Bravo Mexican Restaurant and Bar

Great prices and fantastic food! Very friendly staff. Happy hour is from 10am to 9pm!

After hearing about the variety show that they have on the weekend, we decided to give Rio Bravo a try. We went directly from watching a movie down the street. We arrived and our party was not complete so we decided to wait outside. This was around 10:30 or so. An employee of the restaurant was gracious enough to come check on us outside and ask us if we were going to need a table. We let her know that we were just waiting on one more. She advised us that she would set aside a table for us because seats were filling up inside.
Finally, our party was complete and we made our way in. The restaurant is attached to the Ramada. The restaurant almost looks like a big banquet hall fitted with as many tables and chairs as they could possibly fit in there. As promised, we had a table waiting for us, a party of six. The lighting in the place was a bit confusing. It was actually bright in the restaurant. It didn’t have much ambiance for late night dining and entertaining. Apparently, there was karaōke going on even though there was a DJ playing music at the same time. I felt like I was in the middle of a DJ battle. It would have been a good DJ show if they were not playing two different types of music at the same time. I was starting to get a headache from the two types of music blasting at the same time. I could barely hear our waiter over the loud music.
Immediately, we were provided with menus followed by chips and salsa (typical in any Mexican restaurant). The salsa was a bit spicy for my taste. That’s saying a lot since I like my salsa spicy. The menu was filled with pages that included lunch, breakfast, appetizers, and dinner selections. It also included a couple of pages dedicated to their drink selection. Their drink selection included beers, mixed drinks, and liquors. Two people from our party ordered a margaritas, a regular lime margarita and a strawberry margarita. I ordered an apple martini. I know it was a gamble because typically Mexican establishments specialize in margaritas but I put my faith in the hands of the bartender. I regretted this when I received my drink. It was a bright lime green color with what looked like a half maraschino cherry. Alcohol is alcohol, right? Wrong! I took one sip and that is all I needed. Typically, martinis have vodka, right? This one didn’t seem to have that. It tasted like it only had apple snapps and nothing else. The two other ladies that ordered the margaritas didn’t have better luck with their drinks. Their margaritas were very sweet and both seemed to be lime margaritas. When my sister mentioned to the waiter that she ordered a strawberry margarita. He looked at the ticket and said they were both strawberry margaritas. Lime green strawberry margaritas? Come on!
A couple of other people decided to order food while we waited for the variety show to begin. By this time, it was 11:00 pm. I looked around and there were families in the restaurant with small kids and infants. Of course, this might not be the restaurants fault because you would think that families would have more sense than to bring infants and children to a restaurant that offers a variety show with transvestite entertainment «after hours.» But hey, to each their own. My brother was brought his shrimp cocktail and was actually pleased by it. However, our food was taking forever. I looked around us and it seemed that the popular drink selection around the place was buckets of beers. If only we would have known. None of us drank our drinks and the couple of people that ordered food were starting to wonder what happened to their food they ordered a half hour ago. The variety show by then had started but we had already hard enough. We asked to only be billed for what was on the table and cancel our food order. It comes out that with the restaurant getting a wave of people for the variety show, they forgot to put in our food order. Either way, we left the place. It was a shame because we were actually looking forward to the show. It might be a great show but unfortunately, we were so turned off by the restaurant’s service that we couldn’t take any more of it.
By all means, if a shrimp cocktail and bucket of beers is all you are aspiring for in your evening out, you know where to go. If good service is a must for you, I cannot recommend this place. Although it was very gracious of the hostess to hold a table for us, it was not worth it.
In conclusion, drinks are horrible at Rio Bravo. For them considering themselves a «bar», that’s a shame. We can’t say much about the variety show. We wish we would have been able to stay but the service was too bad to put up with. Try the food at your own risk. Frankly, I wouldn’t take anyone there again.

First let me say that I am very picky about my Mexican food since I can make it at home. This place had a great shrimp cocktail and the salsa with the chips were also good. It wasn’t canned stuff. The strawberry daiquiri was very good and they were not greedy with the alcohol. The place is spacious and they waitstaff was very friendly. They have transvestite comedy shows on Friday at7 and sat at 11 per the staff. Live DJ Saturday and Sunday in the pm. They have daily deals on food which it all looked delicious. They specialty are fajitas since it seemed like everyone was ordering it. This place is a bit hidden but definitely a place to go for some good Mexican and mex seafood. It’s right next to ramada hotel on Coit and 635 so hope to see you there