La Hacienda Ranch is a Tex-Mex restaurant with various locations throughout Dallas. This is a review of the Plano location.
Tex-Mex, as the name suggests, is food influenced by Texas and Mexico. Some ingredients used that are not typical in traditional Mexican cuisine include flour tortillas, ground beef, Chili and cheddar cheese. I was expecting an elevated Taco Bell. What I got, was a surprisingly great culinary experience.
The dining room had a great Western feel to it.
The server brought complimentary chips and salsa.
The chips were nice and warm and I noticed that one of the salsas had a smokey flavor to it. It turns, out they smoke the tomatoes over Texas Mesquite. This is attention to detail and care for the food.
Next, we started with some appetizers fajita nachos and a type of jalapeno popper.
The nachos were ok, but the poppers were delicious. First, the ranch was homemade and very tasty. The poppers themselves were juicy and full of flavor.
For my main I had the Mesquite gilled beef fajitas with both corn and flour tortillas ( I always prefer corn ones but flour are more traditional Tex-Mex).
We also added a side of the spicy sundance queso (yellow sauce) which did not actually taste like much. The beef was extremely tender and well seasoned. The jalapeno that came with it was juicy and had a nice grilled taste. One of the people I was dining with had the rib eye. It was soft like butter and so delicious. It was better than any of the $100+ steaks we had at a proper steak house.
For dessert, the sizzling hot apple pie:
Overall service was good but we did have to ask for a couple things more than once and they forgot an order. The manager came out without us asking for her and made everything right. I was surprised by the little details. It is obvious that this place takes pride in the food they are putting out and that makes for a great meal. I would gladly return.