Jamaca de Dios Restaurant — Restaurant in La Hispaniola

I truly don’t know where to start with this place. Like everyone, I found this place online looking to get the most of my day trip to Jarabacoa. I did not go in with high expectations or the highest hopes/ I was just secure that this incredible real estate at the top of a mountain was going to provide a beautiful evening of great drinks and a proper meal. The min you walk into this place it takes your breath away. The views, the atmosphere, the music, the cleanliness was top notch. But that’s where the positive stops. My table ordered a fish dish, a steak and lobster and cut of steak. My fish dish in the menu described a seared grouper with mashed potatoes and onion/ avocado sauce. When I got my plate I was confused because there was an entire dense layer of cheese that covered the plate and the mash was swimming in white sauce. Granted no menu has every ingredient listed, but when something is drowned and covered in cheese/ dairy , the menu should heed warning. Especially for someone who stays away from dairy, these were one of the “house specials”. This could have easily been salvaged with a quick change of order, but when my dissatisfaction reached the manager he insisted that they could not take the plate or change it because my original order was already in the system. Imagine my surprise a Dominican restaurant where we are spending over 12,000 pesos/ $200 +USD amongst 3 (no alcohol) wouldn’t take my plate back? Even a pizza you order and don’t like gets redone. It took maybe 20-30mins of talking and complaining to change my dish, and another 30-40 to bring out my new order. Over an hour after the original meals arrived to the table. I obviously had to pack it to go and didn’t even touch it the next day. Heartbreaking. My dad ordered steak and lobster, the steak was cooked and seasoned just ok, the kicker was the “lobster” aka the the tiniest Langostino that was fried and extremely dry. It crumbled in his fingers. Absolutely not edible, looked and felt like decoration not food. we were starving after a few excursions so he dealt with it but we complained. My brother ordered a steak and we STRESSED to cook medium well a little pink is ok but NO BLOOD AT ALL. the waiter himself told us the way it’s ordered in Spanish is 3/4th cooked and made jokes about bloody steaks. As life goes the steak comes and it’s seared and served Dripping in blood. It moves around the plate in its blood the waiter sends it back to kitchen and apologizes but it comes back BlAck. Way pass well done, the texture was rubber the flavor was smoke. We ordered a side of “sautéed” veggies but what came to the table was boiled and mushy. The natural juices were no good. I ordered red wine and a bottle of water but in end never got it, had to tell waiter to remove it from bill, since we’d been there 2 hours, reminded him 2x and now we’re leaving.I had every intention of staying here to enjoy desert and cocktails and watch the sunset. But I was so disappointed. I wouldn’t come back here if I was paid to. If you don’t want to miss these views stop by for tapas and drinks that’s it. Bad food but excellent service can save any business, you can always fix a bad meal. But this place has none of the above working for them. Stay far away. Go hiking or paragliding with flying Tony for all the views/ support a local restaurant where the food will be finger licking good, and go home. Food...

BEFORE you get to reading, I’m just a girl from NY who loves good food and actually never writes reviews about anything really because it’s never that serious. But this isn’t one of them.

Going to try and get as straight to the point as possible..

Only thing that is genuinely great about this place is the view….

Great, now the food..

The wait time from the moment that we ordered to the moment that we sat down was an hour and a half. The place was not full.

Once we received our food, it started to come out on chunks - as in, half of our table record their food while the other half of our table waited 15 mins longer than the time stated above.

The taste of the food: The salad didn’t have any kind of dressing on it and was quite bitter for the lettuce that was used. Everyone’s meat lacked salt and was very dry. Would not recommend. The pasta - cheese was cold and in chunks by the time we got it. So that was an experience.

Now the service. There are a couple of incidents that happened in that one sitting that I thought was worth mentioning…

My partner had asked for a strawberry drink (it did have some liquor in it). Once he received, he realized that he didn’t like it. When he told the waitress that he did not like it and requested a new drink instead, the waitress proceeded to say “ the drink has gin, strawberry, etc etc. which is what you ordered….”. When we asked again if we could just receive a new drink, she responded with the same answer….

A family member was going to receive her appetizer and entree at the same time. Since they were coming out at the same time, she wanted to cancel the entree before it getting to the table. When she asked the waitress if she could cancel it, the waitress said “if I cancel this order, they will take it out of MY paycheck.” Which obviously is not something we want. (KEEP READING FOR SOME FORESHADOWING ON THIS PART)

When we asked to speak with the manager about these incidents (still a couple more that I’m choosing not to put here for reader purposes), we told the manager that some of the things we asked to take off the bill should just been canceled and that we didn’t understand why it would be charged on the waitress. The manager then said …. “She must be confused because that’s not what we do here….”

So someone is lying.

All in all, 0/10. Not a fan and will not be...

Aside from the view of this place being very nice and breathtaking, the service I received was atrocious. First, the waiter we had didn’t know any of the menu at all which was not very helpful considering he could not answer simple questions, however I used to be a waiter and I understand learning the menu can be annoying and what not so that was fine. But then the food took over an hour to arrive, and the entire time my party and I kept asking why it was taking so long, and no one had a response. The power went out at one point, and eventually when the chef went up and talked to us he explained that our order had been lost due to the power going out, something that I sort of found hard to believe, but seemed to make everyone else I was with feel better. After this, our food eventually came out about 25 minutes later. When we got it one of our orders came out COMPLETELY wrong, something that I really don’t know how they could’ve allowed. After eating my mediocre Churasco, I immediately wanted to leave. When we asked for the bill we told the waiter to get us a discount due to the unacceptable service provided, and when the check arrived no discount was applied at all. I had to go speak directly to the owner, who tried to talk his way out of giving me a discount, in order to get us an adequate discount. Only after this was I satisfied enough to leave, even though the service they provided should have not even been paid for. The only highlight of this was that I was able to pay with US dollars, due to the fact that after a discount credit cards could not be used. These people do not even give you an appetizer such as bread or anything else, something normally seen as standard in the US (maybe just not common here but still). The prices they charge for the service they provide is absolutely ridiculous, and if it wasn’t for the pretty view they have I’m not sure how the place would still be running. They do have a cool wine...