La Carnita — Restaurant in Mississauga

Want to start off by saying I was very excited to attend this restaurant. I am a huge lover of Mexican cuisine. When we arrived, the table wasn’t ready yet which was fine and our reservation got pushed up 20 minutes. That’s fine. The waitress seems very pleasant when we first arrived, however once seated and our party started to arrive. Just the service declined. Maybe it was the 18% they already taxed us before we even started our experience. The options on the menu were limited when we ordered an appetizer we were asked if we wanted mushrooms with our queso which our waitress made it sound like that was an option so we agreed until we saw our bill and saw that the 23 mushrooms added to the queso cost at seven dollars. The way she made it sound was it was an option not that it was an extra and they as a waitress should say would you like to add this? It is an extra charge, but instead of allowing us to be informed of extra charges, she just made it sound as if it was part of the item. Also with our tortillas we got charged extra dollar 1.50 for a flour option which again didn’t say it’s an extra charge, but then our bill showed that I found that very deceiving and if you want to upsell and look great at your owners expense, at least tell your patron specially when they’ve never been to your restaurant my tacos my shells were extremely cold so the items inside the shell were hot but when you bite into it, my shell was extremely cold which again it’s very disappointing. Never have I had Mexican food where the shell was ice cold I just found we weren’t treated great. We asked for a pitcher of water we weren’t allowed. We can have a glass of water which were very limited. We’d have one or two brought to our party of eight and then we just have to like pour a little bit in each of our glasses, but then other tables around us had a pitcher water on their table so again it wasn’t a great experience. I definitely will never travel back to Mississauga to attend this restaurant and others should know that if you are ordering items and they want to ask if you want to add something be very, very aware that they will charge you a hefty cost for something that wasn’t even present in the actual dish. We were never asked if we were satisfied with our food and if all was ok. But were asked if everything came out that was...

Checked out the food district and then landed on the very anticipated "La Carnita" by both my partner and I, as well as I'm sure other patrons. We visited for lunch on Saturday around 1:00pm and the place was rather busy. We were able to be seated by the friendly hosts rather quick, which was nice.

The atmosphere is very hip and rustic at the same time, the decor is very patio"ish" and colours have earthy tones, rather nice and relaxing, I'm sure the patio will be very nice come full summer.

We ordered five different items and honestly this was a disappointment as my expectations were high. The appetizer we went with was the Scorpion Wings, 6 pieces, normal wing size, while tasty I found them rather strong in flavor? Which is good don't get me wrong but a bit too much! Picture this, they were drenched in sauce and then rolled in a dry rub and then rolled in sauce again and on top of that plated on more sauce.

We were offered the drink of the day which was a rather tasty coffee liquor which apparently was on sale, 3oz and very expensive.

For our actual meal we ordered four different tacos, Carne Azada, Chorizo, Sweet potato and last but not least, Pollo frito, all served in a four inch tortilla. They were all rather interesting flavours and well "balanced" except for the Pollo frito taco which had been breaded and then put on the taco but that was hard as rocks, overcooked to the max.

I was disappointed really with the place, for the price especially I expected to be rather "blown away" and this definately did not do that.

The whole meal came to about 56$ + 20$ tip, Recommend the place for either getting a meal before hitting the club or for lunch AND don't...

The food was fine but not as flavourful as I was expecting. The service gets three stars because it was great for most of the meal but there was a really weird, condescending interaction at the beginning of the meal. The waiter asked if we had been here before and if we wanted any drinks, if we were ready to order, etc. We said we'd need more time with the menu because it had been a long time since any of us had been here and the menu was a bit smaller than last time. None of this was said in a judgmental way towards the waiter--he doesn't control the menu! And whoever does probably had good reasons for changing it considering the costs of running a restaurant. But for some reason he started going on about how we were misremembering and the menu was NEVER bigger. He said, "It used to have a different layout and be physically bigger, but no, the menu items have never changed once." Again, nobody was even asking him why it changed, we were just commenting we'd need some time. It was just an incredibly patronizing and odd interaction from somebody who seemed otherwise pleasant. (And none of us had been to La Carnita in a few years; if you look at the oldest menu pictures on google you can see that some options are, indeed, gone from the current menu.) I don't know, I don't expect servers to remember an old menu and maybe he wasn't even working there then. It was just very off-putting and condescending to be told that all four of us were misremembering, especially from my perspective because all I know is I just needed more time with the menu since I had initially been planning to get the OG Carnita (no longer available), which I got regularly...