Honestly, this has got to be a prison cafeteria disguised as a Southwestern cuisine restaurant. At first, I thought the meal might be good in part to the roasted tomato salsa and the pleasing decor, but it went all downhill from there! Even the salsa, the best part of the meal, was mediocre compared to other restaurants'; such as Don Pablo's in Norwood and Newport, El Pueblo in Blue Ash or Chili's in Montgomery; they even served it with what seemed as store-bought tortilla chips instead of the fresh, homemade chips served in the aforementioned restaurants! When my order, a seafood chimichanga with shrimp and crab, finally came out, it was not what I was expecting. I couldn't even taste or find the shrimp, and the crab was barely noticeable as it swam in a mildly nauseating sauce. The beans and rice were okay, but not even the most idiot of cooks could manage to botch those up! I had had a big lunch only a couple of hours before, so I ended up with a half a plate to take home, and as I attempted to put my chimichanga into the foam box, the box gave way (it wrongly placed on a table corner) and my chimichanga went SPLAT onto the floor. I do accept that it was my fault, and our server, although having made himself scarce earlier, managed to kindly clean it up; he was nearly breaking out into a sweat and it ws clear he'd been working hard all night. But here's the kicker: the owner, a fat Indian man (don't ask me why an Indian man was running a Southwestern ""bistro"") was no help at all when I went to ask for compensation for losing my overpriced ($16) chimichanga. He'd been flaunting his ""oh-I'm-a -rich-restaurateur-and-I-have-a-lot-of-money"" attitude all night, and I even saw him throwing some menus very rudely at the table where he had just sat a nice middle-aged couple (he literally threw the menus from five feet away)! Anyway, as I spoke to him, asking if there were some way that I could get another half seafood chimichanga to-go, he began mumbling to me in some unintelligible gibberish and eventually said he'd pay for my next meal. When I asked for a coupon or written statement to validate this he just brushed me off saying ""I remember, I remember!"" Seems to me that he won't remember at all, but just said that to brush me out of his long, matted, disgusting, graying hair. If I had went to Don Pablo's, El Pueblo, or Chili's (where the management is professional and helpful) they'd have given me a half order of my food in a heartbeat. But at Cactus Pear, the management mumbled and fumbled his way into an excuse to NOT do it. I'd been wanting to try Cactus Pear in Blue Ash for years now, but it was a dismal, and expensive, experience. I paid $16 for bad food and service, whereas I could have gone to a better place for less. You can get great food, atmosphere AND service at El Pueblo, Don Pablo's or Chili's for under $10 instead of bad, expensive everything at Cactus Pear. Cactus Pear is SOOO BAD I think they may beat Delta Air Lines for worst everything. This place doesn't even deserve 1 star; if I could, I'd give it NEGATIVE 5 stars! I will never o back, and as I ate there I wished I'd gone to the Chinese place in the same strip mall instead. AVOID CACTUS PEAR LIKE THE PLAGUE; IT'S THE WORST RESTAURANT ON EARTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*NOTE*
Notice how the last review was in 2008! Well, now it's 2012, and I think that in four years, a restaurant's food and overall quality can decay enough that it goes from the best to the worst. The weird Indian guy could have even bought it from someone else; the soul of a restaurant is in the owner, and he's got a bad one. Just think about it if you still don't believe me about how bad Cactus Pear is. And don't even THINK about opening one of their franchises (they're so stupid that they're doing that now)! If your brave enough, go and try it, but you've been warned...
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