La Onda Latin Mex — Restaurant in Melbourne

La Onda has the distinction of being the reason why my household will no longer try out restaurants which require a credit card at the time of booking and threaten to charge you if you cancel within 24 hours, for the expectations they set up are often doomed for disappointment. I love Mexican flavors, but my partner does not. (Turns out, he needn't have worried.) When deciding to book, I pointed out a few dishes on the menu that I thought would interest him, including the ribs, which was the dish that got him excited to choose this restaurant. Upon arrival, we discovered that La Onda was serving a seriously abridged version of their menu in honor of Taco Tuesday. Their website devoted A LOT of words warning you about the dangers of canceling your booking, but absolutely none about changes to their menu. Truly, as a customer, the only silver lining to the "credit card required for booking" policy is that management can control how full their restaurant is at any given point and make sure they have the front & back of house staff to accommodate, ensuring excellent service. We arrived when the staff was struggling to cope with a large party. Despite our booking, every single step of service was a struggle for us. I clocked several members of the service staff looking at us and noticing that we were being neglected, as they were off to handle something for the large party. To be fair, I don't think this was the staff's fault. They were friendly and kept their cool, and did their best. At no point did I see anyone who looked like management stepping up to help, though it's possible they they were helping out in the kitchen, which, also to be fair, seemed to be coping just fine, as once we managed to place our order, or food came out in a timely manner (as did the food of the small parties around us.) The many people who tried to get a table without a booking (there is honestly so much foot traffic; the booking policy is wholly unnecessary) got way more face time with service staff than we did as they were being turned away. Truly, they should not have taken our booking at that time, and I wish they hadn't. There is not a Mexican spice to be found in this place. The elote was good (though we were served it without plates, so we had to pass the serving bowl back and forth between us every time we took a bite), but the tacos & burrito were lol. The predominant flavor profile of the tacos, according to my partner, was "cardboard." The dominant flavor of the burrito, I kid you not, was mayo. It should always be a red flag when a Mexican restaurant serves mayo on their tacos/burritos, but that the filling was so under-seasoned as to not balance it at all is wild. It would have taken all the lime & hot sauce in the world to get this to an acceptable place, but I wasn't about to bother one of the over-busy servers. We ate all of our food, as we were starving and it was hard-won, but we were so deeply disappointed. (It should be noted that I'm an American who's been living here several years, so I'm aware of the massive divide between what Americans and Aussies consider good Mexican food, so if you're Australian, take part 3 with a grain of salt, as the reviews suggest that this is considered good here. I just want the executive chef to know, I see you, I know you know you're not making good Mexican food.) Finally, even though I know everyone noticed that we had been provided a bad experience, in lieu of any kind of apology or concession, they tried to charge us a Sunday surcharge. On Taco Tuesday, no less!

It doesn't mean a whole lot to say we won't be returning, as we aren't local, but nonetheless, we absolutely won't be, nor will we be recommending this to anyone. I also want to double down on the fact that I don't believe any of this to be the fault of the staff at all. I think this place is poorly managed and that they made some terrible choices regarding their...

Had dinner here and ordered 2 small plates and one large and was pretty disappointed. The food was very expensive, and the serves were very small and not very flavourful. The elotes were great, but quessedillas were tiny and lacked the traditional freshness and spice that you usually find in Mexican food. Wheat tortillas, cheddar cheese (?) and some crinkle cut veggies like carrot and zucchini which really seemed out of place on a quessedilla! No mushroom, onion, pico de gallo, coriander, salsas, or guacamole you would expect with authentic Mexican food. In fact no herbs, fresh sauces or vegetables at all! It's possible they've tried to adapt to an Australian palate and lost the beautiful flavours and authenticity you get in Mexican food in the process. We paid $30 for the large plate "Barbacoa beef ribs" which was actually just a single rib! It was quite amusing when the chef asked how our "ribs" were, and we didn't have the heart to say that it was actually just one and it was not quite what we expected of Barbacoa which is generally a generous serve of slow cooked meat... It was served with the same crinkle cut veggies in the quesedilla... On the plus side the service was great. We had a server who was super lovely and hospitable. However we learned that apparently 20% of the staff's tips go to their Christmas party! Owners: please pay your service staff properly! They're excellent, and the one thing you have going for...

Wow this is your terrible response to Sam A about his 1 star review: "Hello, thanks for taking the time to leave a review. Let me explain so that you are aware of our in-house processes, our Burritos are 'pre-made' on the same day, we cook rice, protein + prepare all fillings. With such a small kitchen + core staff we have to wrap our burritos before our very busy service. The size of the burritos is consistent with the price, we use high quality protein + produce add labour etc. I hope that this has offered you more information so that you understand how our restaurant is run. If you have an allergy please advise the restaurant staff you're visiting so that they can pass this essential info onto the kitchen. I will ensure that our head chef is aware of your feedback as we take this seriously. Have a great day! LOLM" Not only you don't apologise for accidentally adding a piece of pig meat in their BEEF/CHICKEN meal, you don't even offer any sort of compensation like a free meal for next time to make up for your mess. Your response is very condescending and rude. Why would they say they are allergic to pig when they ordered a beef/chicken meal? Clearly your service and care is below 0, especially the way you responded. Learn to respect customers and not ripping them off with undeserved overpriced foods. Otherwise your shop deserves to be...