I never thought I'd be adding a restaurant to Yelp just to tell other patrons to steer clear, but here we are. My boyfriend and I stopped in here looking for a quick bite before seeing Penn and Teller at the Apollo. It looked kitsch but in a funny way, like an old Disney cartoon before they became self-aware. We decided to take it for a spin. This place is definitely a hole-in-the-wall, but seeing one single waitress who struggled with English and looked completely confounded when I had tried ordering in Spanish (didn't even know the correct pronunciations of the dishes) at 6 pm in the evening was a little depressing. I ordered the sopa azteca and tacos (pretty hard to go wrong there). My esteemed companion ordered potatoes and grilled salmon. The sopa azteca was ok (read: edible), and honestly I was so hypnotically enthralled by my ice cold Corona that I wasn't too bothered by that. The potatoes were soggy, though the salsa was very fresh and good. The tacos were.. sad. Limp and not very spicy, with iceberg lettuce and those kind of tomato slices you sometimes see in restaurants but have never found in your own kitchen that are more white than red. I don't know how else to describe it but "sad," which is so far from the vibrancy I have come to expect from Mexican food. The salmon was passable, not "blackened" as the menu described. Much to our frustration, however, was that it came floating on a high tide of more of these mushy potato chunks that were identical to the starter that had been ordered. So, basically my boyfriend's dinner consisted of lots and lots of really mediocre potato chunks, and a reasonable hunk of salmon. It was something a server should have noted in the order, since the menu didn't even mention the potatoes in the salmon dish.
Things took a turn for the worse when we needed to go and make the show, and the server was overwhelmed by most of the other patrons with the same intention. It seemed that her solution to this problem was to stand in the bar and not acknowledge anyone she was supposed to be serving. It got to the point where we finally got up (with two other parties also attempting to leave), and just stood in line for her to run our cards. Normally, such a circumstance would have left me mortified - I really hate being that sort of guest, and I will often choose not to even go to a restaurant unless I think there is time for something leisurely. Nevertheless, this server was being ridiculous, the £40 needed to change hands, and we needed to get the heck out of that dive. All in all, I really wouldn't go back for anything except perhaps another ice cold Corona. It was a pretty sad food experience. read more