Taqueria Playa Tropical — Restaurant in Brow of the Hill

Experience so bad I have to leave a review.

I went in for the first and last time a few weeks ago. Despite warnings from my Mexican friends. I figured it can't be that bad, especially considering these 4+ star reviews. Boy was I wrong!

(If you are one of these people who left more than 3stars, do yourself a favor and check out any other Mexican restaurant! And thank me later)

We ordered chorizo with chips for appetizer. The presentation was already off putting, but the worst part was the lack of ANY seasoning on that ground meat! At that point I started regretting my choices and looked around (not a single person in sight besides the servers, that could potentially be Latino or Hispanic descent, that should have been another major red flag)

So after we soaked the ground meat (I refuse to call it chorizo) in some sauce that was on the table... No one came to check on us nor they told us what's in those bottles on the table...

They didn't have tortilla soup, so I ordered Pozole, which actually was decent. My friend's enchiladas was a different story and another huge disappointment. The dish was simply some (once again) poorly seasoned chicken meat rolled in tortillas with two sauces poured in the middle (one of them we really didn't like but that is personal preference) Those tortillas were not soaked heck, they were not even fully covered in those sauces, half of them just dry, nor baked with tangy cheese on top, none of that, what makes enchiladas...well...Enchiladas... 🤷🏻‍♀️

We haven't seen the server ever since she dropped off the food, so we couldn't ask for at least an explanation or fix of any of the horrors we witnessed and tasted. Neither did she take the appetizer dishes away, so we had to move them to the empty table beside us and I think we got a side eye for that from another server. After a while we had to figure out to pay at the bar. And we were left utterly disappointed by the food, staff and guests rating this place so highly for unknown reasons.

Mind you, I am white and I wasn't walking in with high expectations. And still ended up incredibly disappointed, even feeling guilty for bringing my...

TLDR; decent prices, long wait time (for lunch), some dishes are hit or miss, FOH seems understaffed.

Went today around 1pm and while we expected it to be busy, the lack of service was pretty disappointing. There were only three people working in FOH and between taking payments, preparing to-go and delivery orders, and attending to the full restaurant, the wait time got pretty bad. A waiter came to take our order in the first five minutes of being seated but we asked for another minute or two to decide, and then waited 15-20 mins before we decided to flag down a nearby waitress to ask to have our order taken. It was a quick and friendly interaction and then we had to wait for the food. I think it took about an hour for us to start eating from the time we got seated. We also thought it would be best to ask the waiters for a pitcher of water so we wouldn't bother them so much throughout our meal, but they never came back to our table at all.

The disappointing part was seeing tables that were seated after us to be attended to and served food first. It didn't just happen with our table, we saw it happen a handful of times while we ate. Don't know if it's dependent on the food being ordered, but 🤷🏻‍♀️

The food was overall pretty good. I'd say a good rule of thumb is stick with beef and chicken dishes. The pork is also pretty good. Please avoid the shrimp taco!! It was very disappointing. While the carne asada and carnitas tacos were loaded, the shrimp taco was two pieces of shrimp with a blob of mozzarella that had kind of gone cold already. I couldn't get myself to finish the taco. The chicken enchiladas were super tasty, and I really like their red spicy salsa!

Would definitely come back for certain menu items but I'm a little apprehensive of exploring the seafood options after the poor experience with the shrimp taco. The food's pretty well priced, and definitely a deal when...

Honestly the worst restaurant experience I’ve ever had. My boyfriend and I came by around 3 months ago and I’ve been meaning to share this because it’s clear this is an ongoing issue with this establishment.

We arrived around 5 PM and went up to the front where the hostess took our information, or so we thought. She didn’t ask for a name or any contact details, which already felt disorganized. Yes, the restaurant was busy, but the problems we experienced had nothing to do with the crowd and everything to do with how poorly things were run.

After waiting outside for over 45 minutes, we went back in to check our status. That’s when we found out there were two parties ahead of us who still hadn’t been seated. At this point, the hostess finally took our information again and claimed she wrote it down. We went back outside and waited another 30 minutes, only to still not be called.

We came back in again, and to our frustration, we had been skipped by four tables even after confirming our spot twice. When we asked about it, the hostess acted like it wasn’t a big deal and had this smug attitude the entire time as if we were bothering her just for expecting basic service. Completely unprofessional and rude.

By the time we finally got seated, the food wasn’t even worth it. Honestly, I’ve had much better tacos elsewhere. Overall, a total disappointment. Please do something about the attitude of your staff and the overall quality of your service. We won’t be...