Wow. We had heard good things about Friaco's in Joliet, and decided to visit the location near Fox Valley in Aurora/Naperville. Boy were we disappointed. First, the good --the atmosphere is nice. The booths have very cool carvings of the restaurant name and bright painted chili's, etc....it's a neat place. Now the bad. Starting at the bar....they put a lime in every beer, whether you order a Tecate, Dos Equis, Corona, XX. The standard margarita stinks...it's poured out of a drink mixer into a beer mug....doesn't taste much like a margarita at all...very bland and little taste of tequila. The service was VERY, VERY slow. Once we got to our table, we never did get any chips and salsa, or water. We had to ask 3 times for another drink (we had drinks from the bar). The food - again, terrible. The Sour Cream sauce in the anchiladas was very bland. The Carne Asada (what I expected to be skirt steak) was some thin strip of steak, cooked to gray....no pink visible in the meat, very overcooked. It took so damn long to just get the food, I wasn't about to complain and send it back....that would have taken even longer. On the plates was a lot of beans, and a small amount of lettuce, one tiny piece of guacamole, some onions.....not much of a mixutre. The food basically sucked. The only decent thing we tried was the salsa at the bar....even the chips were hard, stale and bland. We asked for the check 3x...finally the waitress who was setting a few tables around us....we finally asked for the check a 4th time....and she had it right in her apron....what an idiot. We'll never go back, and unfortunately won't recommend the Joliet location either despite the good things we've heard.
Pros: Very few Mexican restaurants in the area - not much to choose from. Ambience is nice.
Cons: Food, drinks and service were terrible.
more