Taco Taco Monteverde — Restaurant in Monteverde

My wife and I had a so-so dinner at Taco Taco in Monteverde. The food was decent enough, but the service was could use work.

We ordered the chips and guacamole/salsa, the esquites, pork al pastor tacos, and the baja fish tacos. The highlights of our meal were the tangy, cheesy esquites, the four varieties of fresh salsa, and the well prepared and flavorful fish tacos. We found the pork both dry and flavorless in the al pastor tacos and the tortilla chips a bit stale.

Service ran a little roughly. Upon arriving to the restaurant, the host informed us that it would take 30 minutes to receive our food. We were fine with this, but our food ended up coming out much faster. While not a problem per se, we found this odd, especially since our food arrived pretty quickly after ordering.

More importantly, after being seated it took a very long time for anyone to even acknowledge our presence; I had to flag down a waiter to receive service. When our waitress finally showed up, she informed us that chips and salsa were unavailable but that we could order the nachos which are similar (which is not really true). When I asked for further clarification, she eventually stated that it would take five minutes to receive the chips and salsa. I’m not sure if this was a language issue or a deceptive attempt to upsell, but the interaction was not super pleasant.

On the plus side, this place offers great Monteverde Brewing beer on tap and is open much later than most restaurants in town. The food overall is so-so, prices are standard, and the service is off. Not a bad option for a Mexican craving or a later night option, but...

A bustling Taco restaurant on the edge of central Santa Elena with average food but slow service.

We asked to be seated upstairs as there’s more of an atmosphere and it was raining when we arrived with the downstairs being mainly outside. When waiting to be seated several servers ignored us and didn’t smile on greeting us. We were eventually seated and took 25 minutes to order drinks and food. My partner and I had nachos with salsa to start. Comes with a generous portion of nachos and 3 different house salsas in bottles to try. All the salsas were tasty but a couple were slightly fizzy in taste so wasn’t sure if they were at their best! for mains we had a beef burrito and a summer salad (served in a tortilla bowl). The burrito was massive and well packed. The salad bowl was fresh but by the time you have eaten the salad the tortilla bowl was soggy and not nice to eat.

For the atmosphere we could hear the restaurants music and the music from another local bar if sat anywhere either outside or under cover. very annoying after a while as totally different music styles.

Generally this taco restaurant was good value for money but not great quality with...

The food is delicious! We went there 2 days in a row. The jalapeños margaritas were so amazing that my partner ditched her beer and ordered multiple margaritas throughout our meal.

Now, for the not so good parts... the staff is disorganized to the max. The first time we went there, it was around 2ish and hardly anyone there, and it took forever to get the food or drinks. When it came time to pay, the guy asked if we wanted to leave a tip. I told him that I thought the tip was included, and he said that that 10% charge we are seeing goes to the restaurant and not them. I'm not sure if he was trying to get one over on me or if the restaurant is stealing their tips. Either way, it's pretty shady. The second time we went was for dinner; they were out of the green plantain dish we went there specifically for. Chips were offered in place of the plantains, since my partner didn't want to order a different meal, but then the chips never came. They don't come to the table enough, so asking for the chips that late in the meal didn't make sense.

End game: Food is amazing, but service...