Blanco Cantina — Restaurant in Calgary

Went here and encountered one of the worst services I have ever received. Friend arrived first and had a cola. My boyfriend and I arrived 5 minutes later. This was our first time visiting this establishment. Walking in good vibe not too busy, it was about 21:08. We made plans here due to the 'Happy Hour Tacos'. Upon sitting and chatting noticed we did not have the menu. We were waiting for a while before our waitress came and asked for our 'drink' order. After we ordered our drinks, I asked if we could get the food menu... our waitress just looks at me like she had no idea what I was asking for. She did end up coming back to give us the menu. Few minutes go by, and we get our drinks from whom I believe is the bartender. Followed by our waitress taking our order. Again, I've never been here, and she asked us all what we wanted to order and when it came to me, I guess I was ordering 'incorrectly' she wanted to know 'how many tacos' I was getting before I could tell her what kind of tacos they were. Checkmark on making your customers feel like they are dumb. When all of our food orders were taken not long after our food came. All pretty good but I think having such an awful experience so far made it not taste as good, delicious as it should be. When it was time to pay for the bill that my friend and I were fighting over I paid by interact and didn't look at the full charge. Once the payment transaction fully completed my friend took the receipt and said... you just paid full price for our whole meal. Shocked, I looked at it and she was correct. It was in fact paid full price with tip. We all looked at our waitress and all she said was 'oh (long pause and very awkward vibes) I guess I'll have to talk to my manager. Our group was watching the interaction with her manager and when our waitress came back, she asks, 'is cash okay for the refund'. She disappears and I guess goes to grab the refund from somewhere and I made eye contact with the manager, and he says, 'it happens'. (Okay, yes, sure. I understand.) But with no apology... okay. Thats how it is with this location. Still reeling from the whole interaction, I automatically said sure. The full bill was 107.42 (with the happy hour promotion it should have been around $65). She ends up giving $32 in cash no apology with the mistake. (Again, no manners?) I say thank you and we all leave. I wasn't going to write a review but honestly. If ya'll are thinking about going to this location, please rethink and go to the other locations. I was really excited to try a new restaurant with highly raved tacos and just ended up being very...

Could have been so much better. Tried the Kensington location after having a terrible experience on the 17th Ave location. We got sat and had one server come take our drink orders once and then had no one come back for an hour until we just left. 2nd time The Kensington front end manager or whoever she was was a complete ditz and extremely rude. We sat at the bar and said we would like to wait for an umbrella(we asked the servicer what's the best way to get under an umbrella and she said to wait and she would sit us there) twice they tried to offer us a seat outside in the sun and we said no we are going to wait. Twice. By the 3rd and 4th time she told us they had to arrange so many other people just for us eve though we were patently waiting ? And they said it was first come first serve and we waited at the bar and they sat 2 groups before us who just walked in. Again we asked and they said they are trying? But it's hard for they to arrange everyone even though they said it's first come first serve? So after finishing 2 drinks each and waiting 40 mins for an umbrella we just sat outside on the side and barely anyone came to help us. The same manager walked past us and smiled everytime and when we asked her for help she said our server would be back yet she was serving everyone else outside. And the server never came back she came to clear tables and said she would come back but never did. Strange service. Just not friendly and the tacos made us sick. Not going to try that place again we wanted to drink and eat tacos and have fun but they stopped us from enjoying that for the 2nd time. This was mid day around 4pm and wasn't very busy. Just tell us you only want a certain looking person to sit under the umbrella. Felt like...

An edit in response to the manager: Thanks for responding. We love supporting local businesses but also appreciate businesses being transparent. In regards to the taco Tuesday special, I think your servers should have explained that getting the tacos in a take-out box would cost more. We were paying $30+ per person as dine-in customers and had no issue paying extra if the deal was explained to us while we were ordering. As for the speakers being broken, none of the two servers we asked told us that. They did however tell us that they were "not allowed" to decrease the volume of the music. We had only asked them decrease it slightly. The restaurant was not busy when we came in either.

We hope the service can improve in the future for other patrons.

Original review: The food is decent. Used to be better but has gone down over the years. The customer service is atrocious. It's very difficult to get someone's attention to order more food or get the bill. Atmosphere is extremely loud, we could barely hear each other because of the blasting music. We asked if they could turn it down a bit, twice, but they said they couldn't do that. We ate in and wanted to get some extra tacos to go and the server didn't clarify that the special did not apply to take out. She only told us after we paid the bill and asked why we were charged more for the to-go order.

If you have kids or are someone that gets overstimulated by sounds, know that this place is very loud. Also, if you are here for Taco Tuesday, order-in and get take out boxes if you want to take some home because they'll charge you the normal price if you order to-go.

We were regular customers but...