La Reina — Restaurant in Guelph

High prices for small portions of well presented, but cold, poor quality food. Wait staff, who outnumbered guests, very disengaged and inattentive.

My wife and I were quite excited to find out there was a place to get tacos and not have to drive to Toronto or Hamilton. Unfortunately, we were quite disappointed with the service and food we received at La Reina a few weeks ago.

The reason why I'd avoid coming back is that all of these concerns below can be easily addressed if I had been able to speak to the staff to let them know that this was happening and fix the dishes. I am not one to return dishes to the kitchen unless absolutely necessary, and I was hoping that someone would come and ask us how our meal was going. I am really not picky and not hard to please, and understand that there are staffing issues, new kitchen rotations, and bad days. Unfortunately, between the two hostesses at front of house, the three waitstaff there was a 15-20 minute gap between receiving the food and me giving up, walking to the hostess and paying the bill so we can leave. One was still being trained by another in the back which was understandable, but the other one on her phone beside the bar and serving intermittently for the entirety of our visit was less so. I understand and believe in breaks and busy nights, but that kind of behaviour when a customer is trying to flag down a server while there are only 3-4 small tables combined patio + inside with 4 or 5 staff members around is ridiculous.

The guacamole was served with cold chicharones/pork rinds and cold, oily chips. I believe that the oil is a good sign that these chips were once freshly made in house, but they were stone cold and a little bit soggy. Guacamole was ok (more on the acidic and mushy/homogenous side if you enjoy that), with a sprinkling of Tajin on top.

The tacos we ordered, the brisket and al pastor specifically, were terrible. They were small, cold tortilla with no second tortilla underneath, and the meat was overcooked to oblivion. The presentation was very good, but upon taking the first bite, the taco was cold and the meat was dry. I understand the process of a proper roast and carve taco can be a bit dry at times, but this was a completely different level of negligence, thinly veiled by sauce and toppings. Not crispy, but dry and stringy.

The shrimp taco was the only one that was edible, but be warned that it is on the heavier side with rich sauces and cheese.

Having paid much more and much less for tacos, I can certainly attest to the Brisket and Al Pastor I ate being the worst value in all of my travels. Better than a Taco Bell Taco, but even at taco tuesday prices, I would not say it was worth it. I really hope that this restaurant can take this feedback and improve! I would love to see this restaurant become a decent establishment, worthy of the Toronto pricing they feature...

Since 2021 my girlfriend and I have been going to la rena for margaritas and food. We moved here from another province for school and have some good experiences eating here. We often brought our parents here when they would visit and everyone mostly enjoyed the experience. The food is pretty good albeit overpriced. The margaritas are delicious. The atmosphere is okay, but it seems like they don’t know the vibe they are going for.

On one fateful night, the night after a Valentine’s Day which my partner and I were not together to celebrate we decided to go to La Rena to celebrate a day late. We stroll into the restaurant and are greeted by a very nice hostess who we tell we would like to sit at the bar so we can watch the hockey game that’s on. We sit down and are going over the menu when the bartender comes over and greets us. Just as we are answering he gets distracted by a coworker and completely ignores us. Okay fair enough that’s fine we’re all human. He eventually comes back over to us and asks us what we’d like. We say we’d like to start with some margaritas, which is our normal go-to here, to which he responds by asking for our ID’s. We grab our ID’s and hand them over. We are both in our mid twenties so sure we may look somewhat young, but we certainly do not look like we just walked out of the most recent showing of paw patrol. The bar tender looks at them, asks where we’re from and we quickly answer, to which he demands a second piece. Okay that’s fine we’re out of province so we’re used to showing a second piece. He snatches the second pieces from our hands and carefully inspects them. He then says “yeah these are fake I’m not serving you”. No further explanation, no asking a manager, no scanning the ID, just up and saunters off to fake clean the bar. We offered to show more ID’s, credit cards, whatever and he just stared at us wide eyed stuck his lip out and ignored us. We are both shocked. We have been coming here for years, and while the price is a little steep, we generally enjoy the place.

We are very disappointed in our experience tonight and likely won’t be back. There is no reason a place like this, in a university town should be rejecting service to out of province patrons because the bar tender “feels the ID is fake”. Get a scanning system or designated ID checker like all the other bars in the city. This was embarrassing for both us...

I wish I could give this restaurant, its servers, and chefs a negative rating – perhaps a minus 100! It truly takes some kind of creativity to make everything taste so terrible. I’m honestly puzzled by the positive reviews; maybe the staff and chef have recently changed. But let me tell you, this experience was unbelievable in the worst way.

We visited on what was supposed to be a simple Sunday, traveling from Milton to Guelph for brunch/lunch. From the start, our server seemed completely lost, constantly apologizing for every issue. Did that help with the frustration and hunger I was feeling? Absolutely not. Am I over it the next day? Not at all. We were starving at 1:30 p.m., and I ordered a steak dish from the main menu. The server even brought me a special steak knife, only to come back 10 minutes later to inform us that they had run out of all main dishes. Really? Was this a joke? Why wasn’t this checked before we ordered?

We should have left right then, but my 8-year-old brother was so hungry that we stayed and ordered different meals, which I ended up disliking. Everything we received was shockingly salty and greasy. My aunt couldn’t even stand the taste of her taco and had to ask the server to remove it from the table—it wasn’t even included in our bill. I managed to take two bites of an egg dish that was topped with a dreadful mayo concoction. How do you waste quality ingredients so badly? My mom’s dish was no better; the taco shell was soggy and, again, overwhelmingly salty.

I sincerely hope the manager reads this review and makes some serious changes, because while the restaurant's atmosphere is great, the food was appalling. I deeply regret the $7 tip I left the server, as she didn’t fulfill her responsibilities properly. And a big shout-out to the chef for ruining our weekend. After leaving this restaurant, we ended up going to Montana’s, a place we know consistently delivers good quality food, just to get a proper meal since we were still hungry.

This was an incredibly disappointing experience for all five of us and a day we wish we...