Restaurante Nuestra Tierra — Restaurant in Catedral

Perhaps this place is okay for locals, but I highly recommend that tourists avoid it. The paraphernalia visible from the street made it look like a tourist trap, but we disregard our better instincts to our regret because 1) we were famished and 2) a local hotel employee recommended it to us.

The biggest issue was the photo scam; during the meal they forced hats on our heads and got us to hold up a banner while they took a photo. We were not asked, and the power imbalance of them looming over us while we were sitting made it very difficult to say no as we should have done. At the very end, we were given the photo along with the bill. The bill seemed overly high but it was in Spanish so we didn’t understand it at the time. The waiter was literally looming over my shoulder as I was looking at it, which made us feel too pressured to check it further. It turns out we were charged an extra $20+USD for the photo they forced on us. We felt the scam and knew what was happening at every stage, but because of their pressure tactics and our own fear of confrontation, we fell for it anyway.

Additionally, there was a ten percent service charge automatically applied to our bill, but our waiter still verbally asked us for a tip, kept pointing at where to add it, and looked over my shoulder the entire time until I wrote one and paid the bill. Had he simply pointed to the tip line on the bill and stepped back - I have seen every other waiter do in Costa Rica - I would not have been bothered, but this very clearly seemed to be another pressure tactic for us to tip.

And, frankly, the food was not good. It was oily and had a strange taste, and my wife couldn’t even eat her meal. We have thoroughly enjoyed our other meals in Costa Rica, so this was particularly disappointing. This place was not an authentic Costa...

Festive spot! They were playing music with a small live band when I first arrived, it was cute. The service was friendly but it could be improved. It was my first day I. Costa Rica so I asked for a specialty drink but got an answer back to just look at the menu & “that was it”. Then, sadly I had to just google drinks of Costa Rica to discover the name of the local cocktail. I had hoped that my server would talk with me in person instead of me having using the Internet on my phone.

Once I learned from the Internet that drink of Costa Rica is called Guaro Sour )Internet = 1, humans = 0). I ordered that and to my delight it was tastier than I thought! Sometimes sour mixes can be too sour or too sweet and this was quite good. I do recommend trying it. Service did get much better afterwards and we had a friendly chat.

The dish I ordered was extremely good. I’m not accustomed to eating hearts of palm, but that ingredient along with shrimp in a cream sauce that topped the local fish, which was Corvina, common in Costa Rica from the coast, was really good! I do wish the dish would’ve been half the size and half the price, though. It truly was more food and more money for one meal and I don’t like wasting food, but I had to. There was no way I could force myself to eat an entrée portioned for two. It’s a bit pricey, too, compared to other spots nearby. More restaurants need to offer half order portions!!

Lotta “flare” in there, so much to look at. It’s like the Applebee’s of Costa Rica but of course Costa Rica has much more localized, fresh, and tastier food than...

It saddens me to have to write my first bad review, but I can’t let this slide. As a Costa Rican national who lives abroad, I am anxious to try foods that I haven’t had in years, so I was excited to eat here. The food didn’t taste bad to me, except the elote. My mom (a 72 year-old very Costa Rican woman) was not as keen on it. The real issue was realizing that, whether it was just the server or the establishment as a whole, trying to take advantage of foreigners is a very real thing. I ordered tons of food, knowing that I could take it home, but we were not given all we had left over. My mom kept a very sharp eye on what the server was doing, especially after I asked him where certain things had gone. When it came to paying, I was given the choice to either do it in colones or dollars, to which I chose the colones. Had I chosen dollars, I would have been charged and extra $5 for no apparent reason. My bank statement confirmed that my total would have been around $78, not $82. I come expecting a service and I’m more than willing to pay for it and more (as my ¢5000 tip, to my mother’s dismay, will attest to), but I will not permit such behavior to exist without denouncing it. It is indecent to try and rob people just because they’re tourists and may not understand how things are. I will not go back there and will have to give a bad reference to everyone I talk to when I go back...