Zapoteca — Restaurant in Vancouver

I will start by saying this is some of the best Mexican food in Vancouver. Each dish was packed full of flavour with generous portions...but the service...was terrible.

I'm not sure if it was the staff on the particular Friday night we went but, I've never experienced such terrible service.

The staff were friendly but ridiculously slow and forgetful.

It started with when we arrived. We were left standing at the door for 5 minutes while the door staff pottered around doing seemingly nothing, fixing lights and what not. The place had multiple empty tables too, we still had to wait in the cold to be seated.

The women who took our order started to take it, once we listed out appys she just turned around and walked away...said absolutely nothing and didn't come back. It took 5 minutes to flag down someone to take the rest of our order.

We thought it was random misunderstanding and enjoyed our appetizers. But it took 55 minutes from us finishing our appetizers to get the main course, and when we got it, we needed to request cutlery twice.

During that almost hour, our glasses were regularly empty, and it was difficult to flag staff down to request a refill, and once we did, it took even longer to get the next glass.

I usually wouldn't complain about something like this only for the place was half empty, the staff stood in the hallway to the kitchen chatting and it wasn't just one staffer, it was multiple bad interactions.

We paid almost $150 for food and drinks and only for the food was that good I'd be leaving 1 star.

Please speak with and train your staff, your food is too good to have such poor service.

I really want to come back and try more, if there is guaranteed better service, especially because almost everything on the menu is gluten free which is rare...

Good food with awful service - in short my experience for the evening.

We were looking forward to trying this place because of the high rating, but unfortunately I was disappointed with the service. Our waitress was Alejandra and she either lacked training or just simply did not care about doing her job.

1. After asking a few questions on the menu, I decided on Mole Verde, which is a fish plate. My plate arrived with a slap of stake, which was Mole Negro. It took me a good 10 minutes to get some attention, which was not even from our server Alejandra, but one of her co-worker's. The other girl was apologetic, stating that it was a misunderstanding, which was far from the truth because I asked what kind of fish was in the mole and Alejandra pulled her own phone to do a Google search on the fish. Then I was told that they run out of mole verde and that's the reason why I was served mole negro, which no one even asked if that was okay. There was not even an acknowledgement of the mistake by Alejandra, needless to say an apology.
2. My husband was interested in the Tuesday special taco plate and asked if it was street tacos. Alejandra pretty much laughed him off stating that tacos are tacos and she did not know what "street" tacos were, even though she is from Mexico. From the attached pictures alone the difference is visible - the plate of 15 small tacos is what my husband ordered, aka the street tacos; and the other plate includes normal size tacos.
3. We sat with empty glasses throughout the evening and had to ask for water twice, which is unacceptable.

Perhaps (and hopefully) it's only a one time bad experience, but we...

I live in the neighborhood. I've eaten here at different times, with friends and on my own. Very hit and miss. Staff has been great and very bad. Didn't come for a year after a very bad experience with a staff member. He actually yelled at me! Had to do with him wanting to close early because he had a life outside of Zappoteca. This was an hour before the closing time btw.

So recently decided to try again as when I walked by crazy Euro dude was not there. Service was awesome and food was great.

Decided to try happy hour today and it was disappointing to say the least! Got a beer and appy sized nachos with barbacoa. Big mistake. Barbacoa was chewy and ice cold and the nachos were soggy and in a big clump on the plate.

Had to ask for hot sauce. Service was 40% level.

Decided to ask for some chips to use up the remainder of the homemade hot sauce, which are usually no charge here.

Got the bill and was shocked that it was $40. For one beer soggy, cold appy nachos and a small handful of stale chips. I was treated very nonchalantly when I inquired about why I was charged $3.00 for a small handful of chips when every other time I have come here they were free, including numerous happy hour visits. She said they were not free during happy hour. Quite condescending. Not sure about their staff training. Like I mentioned recently it was awesome with an older guy and a younger girl but today was so blah.

I really want this place to work. But there is no continuity.

I want to rate it lower but wont only due to the wonderful...