Abuelo's - Knoxville

I 'll readily admit I 'm a TexMex/Southwest/Mexican food snob. I come from the southwest and know good and authentic food of this genre. I 've lived in the D.C. area for the last 17 years (unfortunately and recently returned from the southwestern sojourn where I ate my weight in Mexican food because I knew that when I returned to the east coast I would be unable to get the same quality. It would most likely be American/Mexican Fusion or imitation cooking to appease the American uninitiated or uniformed palate. However, this is one of those times when I am VERY happy to be wrong. Abuelo 's was an extraordinarily pleasant surprise! Their salsa tasted fresh and was appropriately spiced; when served, the plates are VERY hot as is the food! I ordered the Laredo Hand rolled beef enchilada, cheese enchilada and a crispy beef taco and half way through the meal I ordered the The Grande Three enchiladas one beef, one cheese and one chicken a cheese chile relleno, tamale, crispy beef taco and our handmade guacamole to go. I have several days of unpacking when the movers were going leave the following day and what better way to round out the day than with a Grande from Abuelo 's and a margarita over the two following days (its a lot of food! I 'm currently plotting my return to restock but this time I 'll bring my daughter with me so she can wipe away the tears of jealousy and exchange them for tears of happiness. . .

This is a chain restaurant out of Texas. Its not well known nationwide, yet. The outside image,and the indoor furnishings are excellent. Service is good. Salsas are good. They come in a trio! I had a combo plate. The food was fair. With everything else so nice I was hoping for better. The food did not wow me at all, but most of all, the Chili relleno was NOT a poblano! They used a thin anaheim chili and then hid it in the combo plate to where you could not hardly find it, let alone see it alone and how thin it was. For those that are not familiar, in most peoples opinion a PROPER chili relleno SHOULD be in a poblano. The poblano is dark green, has the best flavor for this, and is large. Many restaurants dont use the term chili relleno they just say poblano everyone knows what that is. To me this is unforgivable. If you cant do it right, dont do it at all!!!! Many Mexican restaurants dont do it as its more tricky to make and time consuming to do it right. They really should reconsider this bad attempt at a proper relleno.

Abuelos is a chain Mexican Tex Mex restaurant with 38 locations. It has been in Knoxville for many years now and is located right in the middle of Turkey Creek. In past years, I 've been to this particular Abuelos and it wasn 't good. It was the type of meal that you forget after a few years like eating at a random Applebees. Nonetheless, I thought I 'd give them a second chance. After all, they somehow maintain a prime location in Turkey Creek and people seem to go there. If it was bad, wouldn 't the free market economy deliver a swift death blow? Alas, apparently there is room for mediocre and even bad restaurants to survive. Abuelos illustrates this perfectly. I ordered the pork tenderloin with sweet chile glaze (a so called House Specialty). It was accompanied by mashed potatoes and beans. We also ordered the guacamole appetizer. While I wouldn 't usually order mashed potatoes in a Mexican restaurant, Abuelos saw fit to include it on their house specialty. So, I falsely assumed the side would be decent and, at a minimum, edible. But, when it came out, it looked like pretty gruesome. Like a sloppy, homogenized mixture of cheese and potato mix that had been microwaved 2 minutes too long. For goodness sake, just look at the picture below. I felt that eating the potatoes would be a food A bomb for my gut. The beans were a little better. At least, they resembled beans. But, the beans were so flavorless it was hard to eat more than a few bites. Now, the pork. It tasted fair. But, it wasn 't very good. Certainly nothing special or unique about it. Strangely enough, the pork tasted an awful lot like the teriyaki chicken over at Panda Express. In fact, it was cut up the same way and had a similar (yet less appealing) flavor. For the money, I 'd much prefer the Panda Express teriyaki chicken. At least the sides would be better and I 'd even get a fortune cookie! My wife ordered tamales. Her food also was pretty bad. Probably some of the least appealing tamales I have ever consumed. Overall: Avoid Abuelos. It 's name is strangely appropriate. If you had put my grandfather into a kitchen, I suspect the food would have tasted like this. That 's because, when he was alive, all he could do was open cans and use a microwave.

Delicious food and good margarita's what else could you ask for? The atmosphere is nice and relaxing, you can watch TV, eat three different kinds of salsa which is included with your meal and eat some really tasty Tex-mex. My server was fantastic as well.

So wanted to update my experience with Abuelo's. We decided to go back today based on the concern that was shown by the Social Media group for Abuelo's and let me say, job well done!! The staff that was there was not familiar to me as I think many of the old staff had gotten complacent about the service provided. The food was excellent and the service provided by Autumn was top notch! She is a KEEPER!! Well spoken, intuitive and excellent people skills all around. Autumn was the catalyst for our great feeling that Management was getting this place back in shape. Autumn is a major reason we will be back! Kudos Abuelo's for getting this right!! We appreciate it! Cheers!!