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Review content:
I took my staff to dinner after a very long hard day at work. We chose this restaurant because it we thought it would be the quickest place to sit down and get a decent meal.
Someone greeted us, seated us and gave us menus, then left, and stood by the bar, talking to the bartender. I kept craning my neck around looking for a waitress, assuming that the person who seated us was the hostess because she had eye contact with me at least 5 times, and just kept yapping to the bartender. Finally she deigned to come to our table- and lo and behold, she was in fact, the waitress. We were SO hungry and thirsty that the 10 minutes she made us wait, while she stood there WATCHING us try to get some attention, didn't bode well for the rest of the night.
In a very unfriendly way, she took our order. 2 people got a fried dish, one got the shrimp burrito, and i had the chickem enchiladas. When the fried shrimp was placed on the table, i was shocked. It was almost black, and it looked all dried out and hard. The Deep fried chicken breast was only slightly less burnt, but still looked dry and very very overcooked. I immediately told the waitress that the fried food, especially the shrimp was burnt, and her lovely response was ""it's not burnt, those are breadcrumbs"". Hmmmm- it amazes me that she thought that i didn't recognize that the coating on the outside of breaded shrimp, is BREADCRUMBS! In this case, they were BURNT breadcrumbs! And it looked like they were cooked in old, burnt oil.
Waitress walked away, and I told the girl to TRY one shrimp, maybe it looks really bad, but tastes good. It was so unappetizing, she could barely force herself to eat any. She broke through the hard crust of burnt breadcrumbs to cut a small piece, and gave a piece to her brother- they both made faces and agreed it was inedible...burnt AND very salty, so we ordered something else.
Throughout the meal, the waitress never stopped by to see how we were, or asked if we needed anything- we
always had to flag her down to get something.
When waitresses are very busy, and you can see they are working hard, I never mind a wait, but when they are standing around, talking to the bartender, I find it pretty unacceptable. Part of the time she was busy, most of the time, she was hanging around by the bar. Still, a little eye contact, or a signal that she'll be with us soon, or SOME form of customer service would have been appreciated.
Then, the bill comes and she charged us for the inedible shrimp. When we asked her about it she said it should be on the bill. We explained that we sent it back because it was burnt One of my staff explained to her that when he worked in a restaurant, if something was sent back, it was always replaced without charge. (hello, this is common knowledge!)
Her snippy reply was ""if you don't like your food, we still charge you for it"" End of story- and she said it really nastily, too. I mean, if it's her restaurant's policy, she could apologize, and explain that it's out of her hands, and try at least be pleasant, but she was so rude and nasty.
On the up side- it's a cute place, and the burrito and the enchiladas were delicious and fresh. Mexican food is a dime a dozen, and san loco is 2 doors away...next time, I'll try San loco, as their staff has always been very helpful and sweet when i order take out. I certainly wouldn't go back to El Nueo Amanecer with the customer service being what it is- no matter how good the 2 dishes were, there's no excuse for the rest of it!
Pros: most of the food was good
Cons: bad service- avoid fried foods!
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