There's something to be said about "reputation". A good one can get you by for quite a while, even if you slip up. A bad one can make life hard for a looooong time. Rene's seems to have a good reputation and always seems to come up in our taco conversations with others. We finally decided to get together at the I-235 and Central location and put their tacos to the test.
First, I have to admit that I've only been to this location once in the 19 years I've been in Wichita and I didn't even have tacos. I got a burrito, as I recall, and it's been so long I really didn't remember anything about it. So I felt like I was coming in with an open mind. The restaurant is a quick serve, sit down restaurant, so I placed my order at the counter and copped a squat with Thing 1 and Thing 2. I decided to go with the fried fish taco, lengua, asada, and chicken. After a few minutes, the tacos were ready. Rene's does have a little bar with different salsas on it as well, so I decided to go with the green tomatillo salsa with mine. The fish taco came out with lettuce and tomato only. The fish was pretty bready and overall was very...... meh. So-so. Definitely not something I would come back for. But, it did benefit from a little salsa to get it down. The other three tacos all came out with onion, tomato, and guacamole. Like, covered in guac. Now.... unlike Thing 1 and Thing 2, I do actually like guacamole. BUUUUUTTT in this case? Not my favorite. The guac was just bland. It looked worse than it tasted, but still.... I felt like the guac definitely covered the meat flavor and not in a good way. All three of my tacos were filled with decent amounts of meat, prepared well, not chewy, etc. But when my tacos stayed together, all I could really taste was mediocre guacamole. Which brings me to another pet peeve: not a single shell stayed together. Not one, and the other turds had the same problem. If I wanted a taco salad, I would've ordered one. On the plus side, it did give me a chance to sample some of the meat from the bottoms that didn't drown in green goo. Those little morsels actually didn't taste too bad, but still left me..... wanting.
So, what's the verdict? I guess I'll be generous here and say that I'm... what? Neutral? Maybe. I think there's a possibility I could talk myself into going back and maybe skipping the guacamole. But for this review, I always like to go with the way they give them to me. And for me, I'm just not feeling it. The fish taco didn't help at all and there's no real service to speak of (not that it was needed really). The price was fine ($2.15/each), but I'm just not in a hurry to buy crumbly gobs of goo anytime soon. My overall rankings on the 5-Taco Scale are below.
Food Quality - 2.0 Tacos
Price - $
Value - 2.0 Tacos
Cleanliness - 2.5 Tacos
Service - 1.0 Tacos (not bad, just wasn't anything other than calling our name to get our order)
Overall Experience - 2.0 Tacos
Likelihood to Return - 1.0 Tacos
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