Rosti • Alajuela — Restaurant in Río Segundo

RostiPollos is conveniently located near the airport and has a nice appearance, both exterior and interior. That is about all the good things I can say about the restaurant. The bad things would include the restaurant being understaffed, below average food quality, expensive prices and hidden costs.

We arrived at RostiPollos a little before 9 pm on 3/14/2017. When it was all said and done, we probably spent 2 hours at the restaurant, when it should have taken us 45 minutes if the service was good. If you have to catch a flight, account for a long wait or do not stop here. The airport has better food quality anyway.

Speaking of food quality, we ordered arroz con pollo and empanadas. We had chicken, rice and empanadas all over the north and eastern parts of costa rica. This was by far the most bland and boring food we ate on our trip. Not authentic, not tasty, so it must be cheap…right?

Speaking of price, on the menu, things seem reasonably priced for a good meal (compared to other parts of the country). I would not qualify this as a good meal, so I would consider this overpriced on the menu. To make things even worse, you will find that they add 13% for ventas (sales tax) and 10% (gratuity). I am from the US, so both of these charges are normal for me, but we ate out at tons of restaurants all over Costa Rica and this was the only one to charge these separately. The overpriced food you purchased will become overpriced, overpriced food by the time you check out.

When we were discussing where to eat, it was between Dennys and RostiPollo. In hindsight, it is obvious we made the...

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express next door and were informed at the front desk that IHG members get a 10% discount at Rostis. They were advertising a Monday-Friday meal deal for 3990 Colones on a billboard outside(we went on a Tuesday) and two sangrias for 4500 Colones on a table top sign. I ordered one of the above mentioned meal deals and my girlfriend ordered a salad and two sangrias. The waitress kept pushing appetizers so we ordered guacamole. After we finished eating, the waitress tried to push dessert on us which we declined. We were finishing up our sangrias and didn’t even ask for the check, she brought us the bill. We told her that we were staying next door and we were IHG members. She refused to honor discount the hotel had informed us about. The manager refused as well. We ended getting charged 4057 colones instead of 3990 colones for the meal deal and 7317 colones for the sangrias instead of 4500 colones, not to mention full price for the salad (5358 colones) and 3895 colones for the guac plus 13% tax and 10% service charge. Some of the travel literature we read gives tourists the heads up about restaurants overcharging, and this was an...

The food is pretty good but service is very poor. It was hard to pick a table because most were not wiped down and were sticky. It took 15 minutes for our server to bring menus, another 10 minutes for water. My water glass was dirty having small particles floating in it so I just drank the water from my backpack.

It took 50 minutes for my wife's dish to come out and another 10 minutes for mine but mine was wrong.. it was supposed to come with pico and guac but did not. I had to go up to the counter to ask for these because our server was never around. It took another 10 minutes for them to bring sides of pico and guac. The server tried to say I ordered the wrong thing but I definitely did not. He repeated it back to us when I ordered. It was just a menu item with no modifications. My wife finished her meal by the time I started mine.

I also had to go to the counter to ask for the check and I saw him roll his eyes at this.. I'm not sure what he expected because he never checked in on us during our meal. There was only one other table in the restaurant so they weren't busy. This was my only negative dining experience after 14 days here...