We like this Mexican/American menu food. The hot food is hot and the cold food is cold. The staff is friendly and the meals come out quickly. The eating areas and the bathroom are always clean. A good place to dine on a date, a business meeting, or with your family.

When this restaurant first opened the food was fresh and the service was fast and courteous. And they have some very "authentic" Hispanic dishes that are not so easy to find at Tex-Mex chain restaurants which I really enjoy. However, the staff at Monterey seem to have gotten complacent of late and our last few visits during the past year were mediocre at best. The food for the most part is still pretty good, but the service leaves a lot to be desired. Service is slow coming to the table sometimes when you are seated and during meals and more than once we saw staff standing around chatting rather than asking us if we needed anything else. We used to go out of our way to go there regularly, now we hardly go there due to the poor, apathetic service.

I live in Bowie and have gone pass this restaurant several times... today, I should have continued to go by there... We arrive in there before the 3pm lunch time cut off (the host seated us and turned to the lunch special page) and the server did not come out until 3:05, and tells us we cannot order from the lunch menu. I spoke to another guy in there and he said he "would talk to her." She then came back and said we could order from the lunch menu. When our food arrived it was thrown on the table by the server, no words said and she walked off. Half way through the meal a guy host came back over and asked if we needed anything and I said yes a manager. He tells the lady server, and she comes over and says she is the manager, I asked to speak to someone over her and she said she was the OWNER... I said to her... "you are the owner and you threw out food on the table at us." She shook her head no like she was out of words... I also noted that she never returned to our table to see how things were or if we needed anything else, she claimed she was on her way back to us....

This was the worst service I have ever seen... especially the part of having the OWNER food our plates on the table, because she waited until after the lunch hour (3pm) was over to come out and take our order.