Thirsty Cactus — Restaurant in Hamilton

My wife and I ate lunch here the other day. I'd been here before but not in a few years. It was slow, only one other table but the bar had people filling most of the bar seats. The waitress came and sat us, took our order. When the food arrived it looked delicious and I rather enjoyed my fish tacos with lime. The fish was fresh and nicely coated in this light and flaky batter. My wife ordered the fish fry which came with the same piece of fish with tartar sauce on the side and a pile of fries and a side but no lime. The fries were okay but they were mostly small nubs and ends which weren't great. The Mexican rice was a little dry and lacked flavour to me but she said she liked it and that it was the best part of her dish. She said the fish was slightly overcooked (I tried a small bite and it seemed okay to me) only came with the one piece but because it was $4 more than the fish tacos we thought it might come with a second piece but it didn't. When we asked the waitress for a lime she said okay but never returned to the table until we were finished so my wife had to try to squeeze the life out of the 3 pieces I had already used to not much success which compounded the disappointment of her dish. Overall it's not great value for the money. $22 for a single small fish and pile of fries and some rice isn't much of a bargain but the $18 fish tacos are better value and flavour. If I was with a group of people who wanted to eat here I probably would, but it wouldn't be something that my wife and I will come to again...

Service has historically been really good with nice servers and have had great times there. Don’t usually post these but we went recently and the service was the worst I’ve ever had at any restaurant for a long time.

We had asked for 2 bowls of chips (~$1.50 each) but were brought out 2 apps of queso dip (was a lot of chips for 6 people but we understood there was probably a misunderstanding and it was our bad so we took it no problem). There was a hair in the chips that didn’t belong to any of us but our waitress was barely around for us to tell her.

We had a table full of empty app plates and glasses and the waitress decided to put her jacket on and go out back (walking right past us doing so) for what I assumed was a smoke break.

She was accommodating with tables and allowed us to join 2 tables together to join friends who showed up late. But when we asked for our “bills”, she brought back 2 bills for 6 people and never showed any morsel of accommodation or interest of even being there really. At that point we had enough and just wanted to leave rather than trying to split the bills or inform her of the hair in the food.

Really love the cactus especially in the summer, and understand if the waitress was having a bad night but the service was appalling… Hope to find an alternative as this experience turned me off from going again...

This was our first visit and it had its issues. We made a reservation for dinner and to play their fantastic trivia (because it wasn't available at our regular places). They sat us at a table that couldn't see any of the tv's (which would make playing trivia nearly impossible) - our waitress even told us they aren't supposed to seat trivia teams at that table. We asked to move to one of the many open tables, but we were told they were all taken or reserved - in fact we were told that we had originally been assigned the table we wanted but then switched and she didn't know why. They kept tables open for people who they thought might be coming instead of serving people who were already there, not just for drinks and trivia - but for drink, dinner and trivia. We finally told them we needed to move and we had a reservation just like others did and were moved to a table that was only a bit better. That was frustrating. Our server was pleasant and fixed our wobbly table very well. Our drinks came quickly, but our food took 70 (yes- seventy) minutes to come out. Waitress said they were slammed in the kitchen, but I know that means - oops I forgot to put your order in!! Food was adequate, but certainly nothing memorable and only ok. If it weren't for trivia we wouldn't have come and it's the only reason we would...