El Torito II

This place is incredible. They have an amazing assortment of meats and goods as well as one of the best restaurants in Lawton. They food is so outstanding.

Avoid this place like the plague… the corn chip reusing, over charging, identity stealing plague. Let me explain.
The first time I ate here was with a friend who had been there a couple of times and love it. We grabbed a table (no one actually seats you or gives you any kind of indication of where to go or when you walk into this disorganized place) and a couple of minutes later the guy busing the table next to us grabs the left over basket chips & sets it on our table. We ask him for a fresh basket and he takes it away. Funny thing about this basket, it had a big ol’ chip on the top that was noticeably burned. A few minutes later our server comes out and brings us what is clearly the exact same basket of chips. Okay, fine, no chips with dinner but we went ahead & ate, the food was tasty and cheap.
Now, to this past Thursday. I’ve eaten there several times since and the food has always been pretty good and always worth the price so I stopped by for a late lunch with a couple of co-​workers. We get our menus (the server was kind enough to kind of dry wipe whatever was on one of them before giving it to us) and order. It takes a long time to get our food, part of what they bring out isn’t ours, and the runner thought that part that actually was ours was not because she thought it was something other than it actually was. Sound confusing, try being there. Fortunately the server swooped in and saved the day clearing it all up. We ate, the food was all good, we give the server our credit card to pay, but when we look at the final tab, something is wrong. All of the prices are 15% to 25% higher than on the menu. Strange but okay, accidents happen. I go up to talk to the manager on duty who explains to me that they raised their prices. I was astonished, you mean that the prices went up 15−25% between the time that we sat down and the time that we paid? No, no, no, that would be absurd. So explains what actually happened. They have new menus which the manager hasn’t actually approved to be used but they went ahead and updated the prices in the computer to the new, higher menu prices. Okay, fine, prices go up but they knowingly and intentionally gave us the lower priced menu, didn’t mention the higher prices before or when we ordered, and even failed to mention the higher prices when ringing us up in an effort to slip it by us. This wasn’t at opening. This was late afternoon and they had been overcharging people all day long. The manager on duty explained several times, again and again, that these were the prices now and the new menu prices were the current prices even though everyone sitting in the dining room during this discussion had been given the old menu. I finally said that I would not pay more than the price listed on the menu. She said that she would have to contact the manager about it. I said fine, you have 5 minutes. A couple of minutes later another server brings over some cash & our card saying that they are refunding the difference in cash since they already ran the card. Okay, great… except that the cash was less than half of the difference between the old prices and the new prices. They actually tried to rip us off while giving us a refund for trying to rip us off!?! I pointed this out, she left again, and finally brought but the actually difference except for the sales tax on the amount that they overcharged us but whatever. All of the difference plus some went to tip the server but the point was that were they knowingly and intentionally defrauding their customers.
Now for the kicker. They had my credit card for a good 10 minutes during this back & forth. Long enough to make anyone a little uncomfortable but given that I’m almost 40 and have never had an identity theft issue I didn’t worry too much about it. Sure enough, two days later a counterfeit of my card was swiped twice (not mail order, a cloned counterfeit card with the strip, name, and all) in Mexico. Fortunately my bank caught it before it was used more than that and it is being investigated. I checked my bank statement for a couple of weeks back and the card had not been out of my possession once during that period and every charge was to a vendor that I have dealt with for years. Obviously I cannot from a legal standpoint and would never indicate that this restaurant or someone working there was involved. I will just present the facts and let you decide where you want to spend your money and what risks you are willing to take.

I just bought a pound of carnitas at the meat counter here. I’ve been stuck on the wonderful barbacoa, but wow, the carnitas are awesome. The butcher asked me if I wanted mixed, and I said yes, which resulted in me getting an ear, meaty pork, and skin in equal proportions. Which actually is completely delicious and unctuous when chopped up together, a little pig-​ear crunch, sticky luscious chicharron (not the crispy kind) and rich, salty, meaty crispy pork meat. It comes with a container of chopped onion, and red and green salsas, both pretty hot. You have to sort out the tortilla situation on your own.
Oh, and this pound of carnitas that will feed me for a week of lunches? $ 5. How this is possible, I do not know. On my way out, I grabbed a huge perfectly ripe avocado ($ 1.00) and a perfectly ripe mango ($ 0.50), for extra happiness.