As we traveled from Wyoming back toward Illinois at the end of our six-week national parks road…read moretrip, we stopped in Nebraska for our second to last overnight break before getting home. After weeks of hiking, driving, unpacking, repacking, and surviving on road snacks and caffeine, we decided to have dinner at Tres Margaritas.
The restaurant itself is very cute and colorful, with lots of traditional Mexican décor and bright painted chairs that give the place a lively atmosphere. We arrived pretty early, around 5 PM, thinking it would be quiet, but the place filled up surprisingly fast. It definitely seems to be a very popular local spot.
The food was actually very good for a road-trip dinner stop. We shared a large steak taco salad that was absolutely enormous and honestly could have fed two hungry hikers without any problem. It came loaded with carne asada, avocado, beans, tortilla chips, and very fresh ingredients. Definitely the highlight of the meal.
I also had a margarita, while my husband ordered an Arnold Palmer, and both were good.
Now, the funniest part of the evening was honestly the service. Our server, Daniel, was polite and friendly, but for reasons we never fully understood, he addressed only me during the entire dinner. Since I speak Spanish, he kept calling me "señora" and speaking directly to me while almost completely ignoring my husband's existence. Not in a rude way exactly, just... very specifically focused on me.
He would take the order looking at me. Bring the food looking at me. Ask questions looking at me. Meanwhile my husband was sitting right there like some kind of invisible travel ghost. At one point my husband joked, "I guess I disappeared and nobody told me."
Honestly, it became more amusing than anything else, and we spent most of dinner quietly laughing about the strange dynamic. The only slightly annoying part was that the check arrived before we were asked whether we wanted dessert, which seems to be becoming a recurring theme on this trip.
Overall though, the food was fresh, satisfying, and generous, the atmosphere was lively and colorful, and it was a pleasant stop at the tail end of a very long journey. After six weeks on the road, sometimes a giant taco salad and an unintentionally hilarious dinner experience are exactly the kind of memories that stick with you.