Texas Embassay, Trafalgar Square Review

Good Points
Nice location, across the road from a bar/club and located in West End.

Bad Points
In my opionion the food is overpriced, of low quality and portions were small. I'm never going back again.
Poor service.

General Comments
I went to Texas Embassy Cantina Ltd for a friend's birthday dinner last Friday (04/02/05) and the setting and location of the actual restaurant was very nice. It all went down hill after I set foot into the restaurant.

Firstly, upon going in, a waitress appeared out of the corner and seemed to mutter something along the lines of how many people but sounded more like hmph mnphy burbur. But I kindly said I have a table booked upstairs already, to which she went off back into the dark corner.
After going upstairs and greeting my friends (there were 20 something or so of them) we all decided to read the menu. To the horror of our eyes, we saw that all the meals in this family-orientated GRILL averaged dishes costing £20, the most expensive being £30 for a T-bone steak. So we decided to give it the benefit of the doubt seeing that it WAS in central London and it WAS an American joint (i.e. BIG portions!) and ordered all sorts from the menu.

After a few drinks (beer £3.75, coke £2.90) the food came... My so called £30 T-bone steak which was meant to be 22oz or something was half the size of my hand. It came on a sizzling platter which was nice, but didn't help much as it seemed to me to be just kept shrinking the piece of meat.
My friend's "Southern Fried Chicken" was even funnier. They looked like pieces of reject wings sold at fast food restaurants. This cost £15+. Nice.
Don't even get me started on the Burritos, they looked and tasted like... eurgh.

Halfway thru the meal I decided to ask for some more napkins because being the sloppy yuppies that we are, food was all over the place. For 10 minutes or so the waiters were nowhere to be seen so I decided to go ask a waiter in the far corner for some on the way to the toilet. I asked him for some napkins, to which he looked at me in a funny way. So I repeated the question to which he marched off to a corner and came back and handed me 3 sheets. So still bursting for the toilet I asked him for some more and to just put it on my table, but he went to get 3 additional sheets and handed it to me.

Onto the side dishes, the menu said that I get a nice black bean and onions and fries with my steak! mmm yummy. But when it came, the black-bean seemed to me to be more like a black paste atomically bonded to the useful sizzling platter and the fries looked thin and more cardboard like, I think I counted in total about 15 fries or so per dish.

The highlight of the night was seeing the side dish for the Mexican food- the Mexican beans. Oh how we laughed (and a few wanted to vomit)!