The employee starred blankly at the cash register with her index finger stuck firmly to a key. A customer had challenged modus operandi at the restaurant with a request for extra cheese on his taco plate.

Several feet away, nearly a dozen fidgety patrons hovered near the counter, glancing repeatedly at the call numbers on their food receipts as if hoping to win the Lotto. But the day’s “jackpots” seemed far and few between.

Welcome to El Indio Mexican Restaurant, where buying a meal can practically soak up more time than making a succession of visits to the post office, Wells Fargo and Ralph’s.

I used to love coming to this unique tortilla-making eatery for homemade chips, beef quesadillas, and more than anything, the restaurant’s famous little taquito “bites” known as Mordiditas. The staff was efficient. Food orders were presented swiftly and accurately. And the salsa bar never appeared as though it had exploded. But the operation seems to have lost its customer focus, at least over the course of my last few visits.

My most recent outing with two friends involved a tortuous wait for our food and some janitorial footwork before eating it. The available table we grabbed was in desperate need of a wipe down. So in the absence of bus waiters, we found a wet rag near the soda machine and launched into “white tornado” mode. Tackling the salsa bar would have required a whole different set of cleaning aids.

Our food order was simple and uncomplicated, yet it required the interrogation of a front-counter employee to help locate its whereabouts. This, while a slew of other patrons began receiving plated food items that were originally meant for carry out — and visa versa.

Amid the confusion our Beef Quesadilla surfaced — but without any beef inside. Miraculously, we waited only a few minutes to get a new one. The item still ranks high in my book in terms of sustenance and flavor. It consists of a giant tortilla stuffed with moist shredded meat, lots of cheese and thick guacamole that isn’t cut excessively with mayo or sour cream. To my knowledge, it’s the only quesadilla in town that is forged into the shape of a classic burrito.

On another bright note, the Mordiditas are as good as ever. The invention dates back to 1940, when the restaurant’s founders first popularized “taquitos” — thin rolled tacos made with soft corn tortillas, filled sparingly with meat, and then fried and topped with lettuce and salsa.

The dish became the mother of Mordiditas, which are essentially bite-size taquitos smothered in goopy cheese sauce and topped with jalapeno peppers. We plowed through two varieties — chicken and beef. Both were very good and extremely decadent.

My friend’s Chile Relleño, however, was a soggy disappointment. Once his favorite dish here, the relleños have diminished in flavor and freshness, he feels. The batter on the Anaheim chile was watery instead of spongy. And the cheese filling tasted nondescript compared to whatever kind was used in “the old days.”

Something about the bean burritos seemed amiss, too. The filling lately is bland and runny. Although like most other burritos on the menu (shredded beef, chicken, carnitas and carne asada), they are available in “mini” size should your appetite demand variety.

The breakfast menu offers Machaca, Huevos Rancheros and burritos stuffed with eggs, ham, chorizo or potatoes. Customer lines are generally shorter in the morning, but the wait for food still remains long. An egg and ham burrito that I ordered recently took more than 10 minutes to appear on the kitchen’s window counter — and another five minutes before a disengaged employee handed it over to me. It came as no surprise that the eggs were wretchedly overcooked.

Early birds flying in with lighter appetites will have better luck settling for an order of hot corn tortillas, which are plucked straight off the restaurant’s busy conveyor belts between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m., Mondays through Saturdays. Three of them cost only 59 cents. Butter them up or dip ‘em in salsa. Either way, they’re among the few delicious treats worth coming in for — provided you have all the time in the world to kill.