My father's friend recommended Bandera as a dining location during our family's pilgrimage to Scottsdale. It's a popular restaurant - when we called up at 5:00pm to make a same-day reservation, the earliest available table was at 9:15pm. We decided to wait for a table instead, and were seated in about 45 minutes.\n\nA quick perusal of the menu told me that it was a Hillstone-owned restaurant: there's the \"macho salad\", a butternut and cheddar enchilada, homemade Oreo sandwich, etc. This was a bit disappointing as I've dined at a couple of Hillstones elsewhere and was hoping for a more original dining experience. But since we were there, we ordered:\n\nGrilled Artichoke ( <url> 4/5 Who doesn't love a nicely-grilled vegetable? This was nice and crispy on the outside, soft and tender on the inside, and served with a good remoulade dip. They serve this at every Houston's and is an appetizer I'll always order.\n\nSkillet Cornbread ( <url> 2.5/5 Another Houston's staple. There is much less cornmeal in this than in most versions of cornbread, and it's quite heavy on the butter. This combination makes for a heavy, non-cakey cornbread, which I actually prefer but will leave traditionalists a bit disappointed. You'll find corn kernels and jalapenos baked into it.\n\nCrispy Chicken Sandwich ( <url> 1.5/5 I had this at Honor Bar in Beverly Hills and LOVED it. Unfortunately, this was quite disappointing. The chicken breast was flavorless in addition to being fried too long so that the overly-crispy batter was falling off. There wasn't enough moisture in the sandwich overall to combat a heavy-tasting bread; the kale slaw was really lacking in vinaigrette and there was none of the delicious honey aioli I remembered from the previous time I ordered this dish. It didn't get finished.\n\nBandera-Style Roasted Chicken ( <url> 2.5/5 I guess there's only so much you can do with rotisserie chicken, but this wasn't a huge step up from what you can get at El Pollo Loco for far cheaper. While the 1/2 chicken was moister, it was prepared with the same paprika and onion powder rub. The accompanying rice looked fantastic, but was ultimately very bland and herbed with parsley rather than cilantro.\n\nBanana Cream Pie ( <url> 1/5 The only thing \"banana\"-y about this dessert were the fat slices on the plate. The pie itself had none. The custard wasn't flavored with anything (no vanilla, no banana, no nothing!) but was just your standard thickened egg yolk. And the whipped cream had no sugar or other sweetener mixed into it and was completely bland. This was less than half-eaten between 3 adults.\n\nWe were a bit disappointed with our dinner and won't return in future visits to Scottsdale. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody who has been to another Hillstone/Houston's in the past.
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