Tequila Joe's

Rating: 3

We ate dinner here in July 2023.

Beef brisket nachos
Fish tacos

Let’s talk in-restaurant movies. We’re certainly not against the idea, you’ll recall how pleased we were to see Space Jam at Burger Liquor. Tequila Joe’s was playing an illegal download of Django Unchained complete with FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION intermittently at the bottom of the screen. That movie is dope and we’ve seen it multiple times. But for a restaurant? There is gory violence, nudity, and torture. They did play it in black and white which helped tone it down, but still, it was a surprise. At least you couldn’t hear the audio.

The place was packed (Django Unchained is a popular movie after all) and we were lucky to get a table. The staff were really nice, but weren’t very organised. There were four staff whom we observed with increasing scrutiny the longer we waited for our meals. It was a shemozzle, they seemed to lack defined jobs, there was a lot of double handling, and overall they seemed flustered and without purposeful direction. They were doing a steady takeaway trade which slowed down an already slow kitchen so we ended up waiting 45 minutes for our meal.

When the food arrived, it was worth the wait. The fish tacos were simple with fresh flavours, crispy battered fish, and we liked how they’d seared the taco shells. The beef nachos were also really nice. We were surprised that the brisket came as big chunks as this was pretty awkward to load onto the corn chips. But the flavours were really good, we liked the liquidy queso in particular.

Bookings recommended.