Cantaritos Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Burnaby

I have never felt compelled to write a review before tonight. I hope that by sharing some honest feedback Cantaritos will be able to make some changes that could significantly improve the customer experience.

Like many of the other reviewers, my family was excited to support a new local restaurant but left feeling disappointed largely due to the staff’s total lack of organization. It seemed as though all the staff were operating on a “look around and jump in as needed” basis. This resulted in some aspects of the service being completely neglected while other tasks were repeated an unnecessary number of times by different staff members.

Examples:

•When trying to book a reservation, we were put on hold after giving our name and party size in order for the staff to check the availability- only for the phone to be picked up by a new staff member who would restart the process, put us on hold, and the cycle repeated a few times.

•We were given a jug of water but didn’t receive any glasses. Half of our table didn’t receive any cutlery. We asked multiple servers but didn’t receive them until after a significant wait.

•Three different servers tried to take our order after we had already placed it with another.

•We waited almost an hour for our appetizers to arrive. It was nearly an hour and a half before 4/8 of the meals we ordered arrived. Some of it was tasty, but some of it unfortunately came out cold. The next 2 meals took another twenty minutes. The last 2 were completely forgotten.

•A server came by twice while we were waiting for the last two meals. Both times he asked “you have everything here?” and both times we said “actually we’re still waiting on two orders of tacos”. The third time, he returned and told us, “the kitchen says you already had your tacos”. My sister politely responded that perhaps there was some confusion because we had received the tacos that my aunt had ordered, but her and my mom were still waiting. He then responded “No, I already brought you your tacos, you must have already finished them” and gestured to the mostly empty plate of our nacho appetizer. My sister again calmly responded, “Oh actually that plate is from the nachos that we all shared. If you look you can see some is still on there.”

The dining experience is somewhat diminished by not being able to share the meal at the same time, so prioritizing time management in the kitchen would really benefit your guests! We did eventually receive the missing tacos and although we appreciated his brief apology for the wait - the manner that it was addressed in combination with a 2 hour wait is a huge deterrent to becoming returning customers. I think it would be a good idea to consider a small gesture to show apology when appropriate, such as cases like this where the expectations of a dine in experience fail to be upheld.

I believe some task delegation and clearly defined roles would also make a world of a difference! Communication and coordination as a team could solve a lot of these issues. I’m sure things would run much more efficiently if someone was put in charge of assigning responsibilities and overseeing operations.

Lastly, please be mindful that the incessant doorbell sound (a signal from the kitchen perhaps as it was not related to the front door opening?) can really affect guests with auditory sensory issues. It caused one of my family members to experience significant discomfort and truthfully, it was generally just unpleasant for the rest of us as well. If it is a communication tool, I think putting a different system in place would definitely be appreciated by many future diners.

This place has potential! The atmosphere was charming, the portions were large and some of the dishes were tasty. I sincerely hope that the staff at Cantaritos will choose to take the feedback in these reviews seriously for the sake of their future customers and the longevity of their...

We arrived around 6 on a Friday to find the whole ground level and patio empty, with no host or hostess to greet us - only a sign asking us to wait to be seated. After about ten minutes (and the arrival of several additional guests) we were eventually noticed by a busser hauling ice, and he flagged a hostess for us. Once noticed, we were seated immediately, as the restaurant was not nearly at capacity.

We were provided one menu between two people, no drink menu, and a QR code that led to a “this campaign has been suspended” page.

It took roughly 25 minutes from seating until we were greeted by a server, who, to her credit was very polite and apologetic about the wait. At this point we were completely ready to order, and so we did.

Time from order to entree: roughly 50 minutes. During this time we did get a flyby from our server to deliver some (admittedly pretty good!) tortilla chips and watery brown salsa. We did not get any further check ins, drink refills, or otherwise during this time. Not even a fresh carafe of water.

I was starting to worry at this point, because I had an obligation at 9 that I needed to get to, and dinner had not yet arrived by 7:45. When it did, I was ready to forgive the wait time, because the servers were pleasant, just badly overwhelmed.

Unfortunately the food was as unsatisfactory as the service.

Four 6” corn tortillas, indistinguishable from store-bought, hopelessly outmatched by a rubbery, flavorless pile of meat and veg. Bland refried beans, bland rice, bland chorizo, bland steak. The only distinguishable flavors in the dish: ham and onion.

The order delivered to my partner wasn’t what she ordered, but after the better part of two hours waiting, we weren’t about to make a fuss. Ultimately I had to bolt before our bill arrived and leave my partner to handle the bill. I don’t know how long that took.

——————

Food: 2/5. It wasn’t inedible and didn’t try to kill us as far as we know. It was unsatisfactory, but it wasn’t terrible.

Service: 2/5: polite but hopeless. Everyone on the floor is decked out in walkie talkies and headsets they don’t seem to use and wrist mounted touchpads that take longer to use than a notepad and pen. Not uncommon to see all the servers standing by the bar typing on their wrist-mounted screens and not paying attention to the floor. Unacceptably slow service, and despite all the tech, they still got half our order wrong.

Atmosphere: 1/5. Cacophonous and chaotic. Servers and bussers flying back and forth all over the place, but accomplishing service at a snail’s pace. Extremely loud and noisy. Despite being seated two feet apart I could barely hear my partner speaking. Extremely hard to relax in an environment where all the staff seem stressed and run off their feet.

I wanted to be gentle and forgiving writing this review because the restaurant has only opened recently and everyone seemed like they were trying their best, but if this is their best it’s not good enough. I doubt I’ll be back except under duress, and I certainly can’t recommend...

This is just based on my own experience. Our family use to frequent this place when it was a Greek restaurant. I heard that it was now a Mexican restaurant and was excited to go there as I love Mexican food. I called to make reservations but asked for a table on the lower floor as my mother in law can not do stairs. When we arrived we were quickly taken to our table but we were all taken aback that the room we were in looked like the staff break room, office and storage area. There were employees on laptops, one with many piles of papers. I mention to the employee that I wish they would have told me over the phone that they were really not set up to seat people downstairs. I didn’t go upstairs but I’m sure it’s probably much nicer. The employee kind of laughed it off. My wife asked, “do you have people that use this area?” Her response was “yes. We use it for VIP” I had to laugh that one off. They continued to set up our table as they were totally not ready even though I made reservations 3 days in advance. The employees on the laptops all cleared out. We were the only ones in the room. Our server came by and told us she’d be our server and that it was just her 2nd day. We were making the best of it and joked with her. (She was very inexperienced but very nice) any questions we asked she had to go find out. Like are the margaritas made with fresh lime or a syrup. I ordered a modelo and had to point it out on the menu as she didn’t know what that was. I ordered the chili rellenos and she asked what meat I wanted. Confused I said “there’s no option in the menu for meat, it’s supposed to be cheese. (More on this later) we all had our dinner orders in and when they came , only three of the dinners were served, my mother in laws dinner was not ready yet so she sat and waited while we had dinner. I do have to say that when we all had our dinners the presentation was nice, the flavours were good. I enjoyed the bits of pineapple in the salad. My mothers in law was enjoying her dinner but notice her plate was cracked in two places. All in all the we got off to a bad start but the food was good, the new server did her best and was fine. Oh. Back to the chili rellanos. There wasn’t supposed to be meat but close to my last bite I did get one chunk of beef which I didn’t know what to make of that. Also the salsa had an off colour, kinda brown and was almost all liquid Like a little bowl of water. Couldn’t see the tomatoes or onion, just liquid. The seafood options were shrimp. Shrimp, and shrimp. Not a lot of variety The margaritas were pricey and served in a small tumbler glass. Will we return. ...