Mexicali Rosa's — Restaurant in Ottawa

I am not the one to write reviews... but I thought that this should be shared:

From the outside Mexi's looks like a lovely place to eat. It looks new, spacious and even has a live guitarist playing inside.

However, I had terrible experience. My friend and I wanted to try something new. However, both of us are quite disappointed and grossed out. After being seated and waiting 15mins to get the waitress to take our drink order, it took an additional 35 mins to get served 2 waters and 1 iced tea, the table behind us had been served dirty plates and when asked for new ones they got dirty plates, our table was in line with the kitchen and we saw one of the young waitress adding and moving the food around with her bare hands to a customers plate (which grossed me out, because as a waitress I know your hands touch many things like, money, customers finished plates, debit machine, doors, wiping tables etc). Also when asked to leave and pay for just our drinks due to time- constraints the waitress runs back to the kitchen (which for some reason, I though she was going to get the debit machine as explicitly asked for.... she brings out the food). The waitress says to pay for the food after the inconvenience. we NEVER touched the food btw and it took you faster to grab the food than it did for the drinks. (unprofessional in my view and very apathetic).

On the note about the food, we had ordered a taco bowl and my friend ordered something with rice and beans (I think someone else had posted a picture of the same thing she ate). Anyway, my beef in the taco bowl was clearly cold and didn't look like it was cooked long enough tbh it looked like it was even sitting out for a couple hours, & the veggies certainly were not fresh. As for my friends food her rice looked old, I think someone used the scoop to pick up something prior to the rice because there was something else in her rice that wasn't at all on her plate. Her beans too looked like it was not fresh.

Thank god we did not eat. We were both concerned that if we did we would have got sick.

Again, very disappointed the waitress brought out the food and made us pay for something we didnt eat nor want too after seeing how this establishment operates.

Overall, never would I recommend this place to anyone. The food is overpriced, staff and food appear to fail heath and safety guidelines, staff were inexperienced, unprofessional, and apathetic.

I...

April 13th was my family’s second time visiting this location and we were excited to celebrate my daughter’s 22nd birthday there after receiving stellar service the first time we came in September 2024.

What a completely disappointing experience it was this time around. The restaurant was fairly empty with only three other families at the time we came at 7:30pm. We were seated at a booth that we had to ask to have wiped down twice as the table and booth seat were dirty from crumbs and salt from a previous group.

Our server Taryn never asked us if we were celebrating a special occasion or if we wanted appetizers. She took our drink orders, brought us water and chips with salsa. There were no napkins, plates or cutlery brought to our table. The next time she came back was to bring out my husband’s main entree again with no cutlery or napkins. She left so swiftly we never got a chance to ask for cutlery and thought maybe she was leaving to get them but that did not happen. Service was slow and too many long gaps between her check ins to see if we needed anything. Needless to say my husband had to leave the table to get cutlery and napkins himself before the waitress noticed it was missing. After that service did improve but it was a bit late at that point.

The atmosphere had a lot of uncleared tables from previous guests, fries, cabbage and food particles under tables/booths on the floor that were not swept up. It looked unkept and unwelcoming for guests being seated to start their dinner which made me want to pack up my meal and finish up at home.

The only positive part of our visit was the food presentation, flavour and portion size was a 10/10! The food is delicious, well seasoned and just as good as our first visit which made up for the poor service and subpar environment. The pina colada was also a 10/10 which I...

🔥Update🔥 As a Master reviewer for Google with over 2.8 million views, here is a breakdown of my experience💃:

We returned and gave this place another chance...and they did not disappoint. 👏

We shared an array of appetizers and loved every minute of it! 🙌I recommend getting 3-4 appetizers and some sick drinks, and having a great time! 💃

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My Mexican husband and I ordered an array of food. This review was of a few months ago, but had just now gotten around to writing it.

We started our experience with three margaritas which were fresh - they hit the spot. We would have liked them to be a bit stronger for the price.🍹🍋‍🟩

The chips were warm and toasted, while salsa was freshly prepared 🍅

Next, we shared some Mex street corn. Those really hit the spot 🌽 We would have liked it to have some spice to it, which would have made it comparable to street corn found in Texas, for example!

My husband then ordered chipotle nachos for fun, as he wanted to try something new. He was not a huge fan of them, sadly. They were missing savor (flavor) and were not spicy. 😥

I had ordered steak fajitas, which were fresh and flavourful🥩🔥. I asked the server if we could have some salsa verde...to which she had no idea what that was. After explaining it in english, she said the restaurant does not have any 😭 I was sad because I wanted some salsa.

We left fhe restaurant a bit hungry with a fat invoice of 150$.💰💸

While I do think that we would give this restaurant another try, we would come with a different mindset to not expect authentic Mexican food. We hope to hear...