Los Lobos — Restaurant in Ontario

Really enjoyed the few drinks I had and the music they played. Highly recommend the Cilantro Cucumber Marg. The decor is funky and fun and patio was nice. My one server was super friendly but I felt a huge disconnect from the rest of the team. Maybe they are short staffed? I’m not sure….. ——Updating as I went for a second time. We were seated promptly by the friendly server I had mentioned beforehand.. service seemed to be running exactly how it was before. We ordered a few tacos which were amazing. The first round of drinks were absolutely delightful. But again, there was no quality check on anything. It took a while for him to come back and asked if we wanted a second drink. We asked for another round and about 5 mins after the bartender approached our table and mentioned that she was out of a certain ingredient for one of our drinks. We suggested ways that the drink could be served as we are in the industry and know a thing or two.. as we were suggesting this another server came out of nowhere and seemed to get quite defensive and say that “they do not do substitutions on their cocktails”….. well to be honest, it’s not a substitution. You’re out of the product? I’ve never felt so ganged up on and uncomfortable in a situation like this. We opted to get another drink in which we did not enjoy but also did not care to mention this to anyone as we had already dealt with enough from the staff. Server out on patio started dismantling patio umbrellas while people were still seated at the tables which I found very pushy and odd. We ended up being the last ones outside and it was quite dark as we weren’t seated on the side without the lights also I had noticed inside seemed a bit more lively. We asked if we could move inside and it seemed like a true inconvenience for us to even be there. We were seated at a long dirty table.. finished our drinks quick and then opted to go to another establishment for a cocktail. It will be a while before I try this place again.. I really want to like it as the food was good and it’s close to home, but my only two experiences have been not the greatest. I’m giving a 2 star solely based on service.. 5 star for food. 3...

Great dinner here overall. I ordered the tacos (beef cheek, pork belly, and battered fish) which were great. I appreciated how creative the food was, as tacos tend to be somewhat similar in other restaurants. The ingredients also seemed very high quality, and I understand that sauces and the like are made in-house, which is great. The chorizo queso starter was also very good, as were the churros. The service was extremely friendly, professional, and fairly attentive. I appreciated how good the server was at topping up water, as I don't think I ever had an empty glass. I also appreciate that he was able to fill the water without interrupting my conversation, which is an underrated quality in service. The cocktails appeared to be on the pricier side, but I still thought they were good value given that Los Lobos serves doubles by default and that they source unique and premium Mexican ingredients for the drinks. The ambience was nice, the decor was well conceptualized but the interior of the restaurant was on the noisier side, so it is somewhat difficult to have an involved conversation. That's not an issue in and of itself but something to consider if you were planning to go here with clients or on the first date.

I really enjoyed the experience overall but I have some suggestions to make it even better:

Since the restaurant is busy on literally every night, I would appreciate some sort of reservation system. Currently, you just go there and they tell you the wait time for a table and give you a call when it becomes available, which sort of wastes time. I think reservations would allow customers to make better use of their time. The wait time on the drinks was fairly long. I understand that the bar has limited capacity, and since the drinks were so much better than standard bar fare I was happy to wait. However, it would still be nice to see shorter wait times, especially at the high price point. I like to have a drink before the appetizer, and my first drink came along with the appetizer even though I ordered it at first. Again, not a terribly big issue but it's nice to be able to have drinks at...

So disappointed, last Saturday afternoon my foster daughter and I had the BEST experience at Los Lobos. We had a tall blonde waitress with a kind and calm energy. The food was spectacular, authentic Mexican taste and portion sizes were huge. In fact we loved it soooo much we raved to our friends and drove over 2 hours to return the following week with them.

Unfortunately we had an entirely different. Our first experience was a 5 star, our second experience was not even 1. Our waitress the second time refused to allow any substitutes (all we asked for no queso on the nachos and extra pico de gallo instead) even tho last week we had no push back substituting things in our salad. The arbitrary rule set a bad vibe immediately. The pineapple juice we ordered was a bigger size last week and the tres leche this week was a smaller portion and way drier than the week before. Additionally on the second visit we were seated near the cash register and the staff gathered there for conversation and one of the guys was leaning on our bench, my foster daughter felt he was hovering uncomfortably close.

We went from wanting to make tradition out of going to Los Lobos and dubbing it best Mexican Resturant outside of Mexico to not ever wanting to go again and feeling the food was all white washed.

Never experienced such drastically different experiences at the same restaurant before. But if they could the make experience consistent with the fist one I had, I believe the restaurant could be known far and wide.

Also there is no parking and street parking is limited.

Unfortunately it’s not worth the drive for us, we won’t be going back as it’s not worth the possibility of having another experience with such blah vibes.

Side note: the artwork is fabulous and...