El Mariachi Mexican Restaurant 3502 Maynardville Highway, Maynardville, TN 37807

"The food and service here is really good."

"We usually eat here several times a month. Never had bad quality food."

"I LOVE THIS RESTAURANT! FOOD IS ALWAYS AMAZING! Even the chips and salsa are amazing and served hot and fresh! Fried ice cream is soo good. Very nice staff and always clean inside."

"What a shame, this used to be a great restaurant. Hadn’t been in a while as I had moved. I ordered my usual, beef chimichanga. It arrived a quarter of the size as usual from any Mexican restaurant. The now tiny portion of beans were thin and tasteless, and the small amount of rice provided tasted like plastic. Someone obviously put a lot of time in to totally ruin what used to be a good spot with good food."

"What happened?? This place used to be excellent food and service. We used to absolutely love this place. They must have changed ownership or cooks, or both. Wait staff is rude and they didn't even greet us. The waitress seemed angry and just plopped our menus on the table (1 menu short too) and walked away without even saying anything to us. Then we waited about 10 minutes before someone else finally returned to get our drink order. And the food...oh the food!!! YUCK!!! Now the food is what I imagine what prison food would taste like. The chips were damp, and the salsa was bland. They cover everything with this disgusting light yellow / gray "cheese" sauce and they load your plate up with random ground beef that tastes like it was cooked 3 days ago and reheated in a microwave. I ordered a tamale and the masa was hard, so hard that I couldn't even cut through it with my fork. We ordered a kid's pizza for my daughter. They messed up and brought us a mexican pizza, which was nothing more than the 3 day old-reheated ground beef between two soggy corn tortillas covered with that light yellow/gray "cheese" sauce. Blecchhh. We asked that they correct her order, and when she got it...it was like one of those gas station pizzas that was just nuked in a microwave...all soft and soggy and hard on the edges all at the same time...and hot as heck. What a disappointment! We ate here often last year, and we always enjoyed the food and experience. Something very very terrible happened to this once amazing place."