El Farallon — Restaurant in Baja California Sur

To begin, I usually do my best to write positive reviews. However, the truth must be shared. I have never been so disappointed & irritated after dinner than after dining at El Farallon 2 nights ago. El Farallon has always been a restaurant that my family has held in high regard. This last visit was definitely something to remember. But it was not positive. When you first arrive, there is usually someone who will escort you to the restaurant. This time, no one offered to guide us to the restaurant. The only person who stopped us was a man in the lobby trying to convince our party of 3 to take 3 shots each before our dinner reservation in 20 minutes. (He made us feel like we were walking by Senor Frogs downtown - not a 5 star resort!) We finally arrived at the restaurant, & unfortunately, the night went downhill from there. We were offered a cocktail starting at 60 USD! When our table was ready, they gave us a new "appetizer menu." You can order caviar for $290 USD! We hadn't even sat down yet, & it felt like they were just trying to up-sell us more & more. They gave us the wine menu, but before we had a chance to look at the wine list, they brought over the main menu to put in our dinner order. The waiter was speaking so rapidly that we had to ask him to stop & repeat himself because it was so overwhelming. Mind you, we didn't even have water in our cups yet! Nor had we been given the opportunity to order drinks yet. The waiter was frustrated & left us with the wooden board menu. He returned a few minutes later & told us to take a picture of the menu. Then he walked off with it & went to another table. By this time, we felt stressed. Thankfully, the evening was just getting started. The live music, which is usually so relaxing & romantic, should be starting soon... But, oh no! To our dismay, & quite honestly, great shock, instead of the classy and elegant musicians that they normally have for such a venue, they music for the night was a mariachi band! The band was horrible & loud. If we wanted to listen to a Mariachi, we could go to a much better place for that. NOT El Farallon - which is a minimum of $150 USD per person! The servers tried to accommodate us & stopped rushing our evening. We saw tables who arrived after us, leaving before us. El Farallon used to be known for being a magical dining experience. Sadly, they have turned that experience into a money operating scheme that, in the end, makes you feel cheated. The food was mediocre, which has been the case for years, but in the past, it was easy to ignore because the rest of the experience was so charming it left you mesmerized. I am disheartened even writing this review. We tried to enjoy the evening as we joked with one another to "take a picture of the menu," like the waiter told us. As the painful night was coming to a close, we asked for our bill. The waiter told us he was having problems with the system & would come back in a few minutes. He never came back, so we asked 2 more waiters for the bill. The waiter returned & explained to us that we must wait longer if we would like to check our bill, otherwise, we could walk with him to the kitchen/bar area & see the bill on the computer screen & pay there. (We should have told HIM to take a picture and bring it to us!) So, we walked to the bar/kitchen area to check our bill for $720 (3 meals and 2 of their "house bottles" of wine). By this point, we were so frustrated by the service & level of rudeness. I told one of the waiters, (who actually was the manager Joaquin), "This is not how you treat paying customers! Especially customers paying over $700.". He replied to me, "Well, you were being a difficult table!" I was stunned by a manager telling paying customers that it was our fault that this evening was like this. We walked back to the lobby in a complete daze. I was with very dear friends who come often to Cabo. They said theywouldl never return to this restaurant. As I've shared this experience with people, it turns out that we're not the only ones. All this to say, go...

We came here for my dad’s birthday on our last night in Cabo and it was very disappointing. I wish we hadn’t spent our last night here and ate at one of the restaurants at our hotel. The servers were awesome but the food was disappointing and was not worth the price. The flavors didn’t go well together or just lacked flavor.

First, our reservation was at 8pm and we spent about 40 minutes before looking at the view outside of the hotel and were asked if we wanted any drinks but we declined. Opting to wait until we were seated at our table to order drinks. Then at 8:15pm after asking an employee if they were going to take us in the golf cart to the restaurant, we finally arrived. We got to the restaurant and were greeted by the hostess and we were offered drinks AGAIN to wait AGAIN until our table was ready. At 9pm we finally sat at our table and ordered drinks. Our server went over the menu and we didn’t get our first course until 9:40pm, and we didn’t leave the restaurant until 12am. This restaurant is EXTREMELY slow and the food didn’t make being there any better. I don’t like that they keep asking you if you want any drinks while you wait 1-2 hours after your reservation time. It seems like they know their service is slow so they try to distract you with offering you drinks and looking at the view. We wanted to wait until we were sat our table to order drinks. If you’re hungry be prepared to wait awhile to get to your first appetizer.

We did the dinner experience and first came out a seafood tomato soup that was unsalted and lacked flavor. It had 1 tiny shrimp, 2 small chunks of crab and 2 small dices of zucchini and a ton of flavorless broth. I could've made this waaaaay better at home. I don’t understand why the chef would even serve that. It wasn’t good at all. They should remove that from the menu and replace it with a Mexican shrimp cocktail served with crackers or tostada chips. My parents, my husband and I didn’t even finish it. The beet salad was simple but good. Nothing special. The ceviche was good. For our main course, my mom and I ordered the sea bass. It was good and cooked correctly. I would’ve liked some citrus added to it. My husband and dad’s steak was tough and cold, so they returned it. My husbands new steak was cooked how he wanted it but my dad’s steak was raw in the middle and still cold. My dad ended up not finishing it and asked the waiter to remove it from the bill.

The sides were disappointing. My husband and I ordered the potato puree which had a lot of star anise in it and bread crumbs on top. We are potato lovers and we didn’t even finish it. I don’t understand why the chef added the bread crumbs on top? It doesn’t need to be added. The combination was odd. We got chayote which was good. The risotto was good. Nothing special. They should really change their potato puree and just keep it simple by just adding garlic and butter.

My mom and I ordered alcohol drinks. My Mexican martini was great. My mom’s mezcal drink tasted watered down and you couldn’t even taste the mezcal. She told the waiter her concerns and she received a new one that was much tastier.

We spent about $400 and this dinner experience was not worth the price. My husband and I are foodies and we’ve been to a lot of Michelin star restaurants and local restaurants where we’ve spent more or less on amazing dinners in San Diego than El Farallon. This place was extremely disappointing food wise.

The servers sang my dad happy birthday and gave him a cake and we received complimentary desserts as well which was very nice of them. The passion fruit chocolate dessert was delicious. It was my favorite item we ate.

The view and ambiance is spectacular, so if you want to come just to say you’ve been here, go for it. But don’t expect to have an amazing 5...

Did not meet expectations. After having had a week full of home run dining experiences in Cabo, the hype had really built up the expectations for this place. The entire experience, up until we were seated, also really built up the expectation as well as the difficulty of getting a reservation. The drive into the Pedregal resort, and the waiting area, prior to walking over to the restaurant, was very very nice. The drinks at the waiting area were overpriced, but the drinks were not bad. When we were seated for dinner, the chairs are the worst chairs for the uneven flooring they have. The waiter stumbled all over explaining things to us and lacked confidence. Not even to say it was a language barrier situation because I speak fluent Spanish and the communicated with him in Spanish. They provided me with a vegetarian menu after they had been informed I am vegan. They need to either have a vegan menu or be better prepared to explain modifications from the vegetarian menu for vegans. We were being asked for our food order before having been asked for our drink order. The drink menu is mobile so you need your phone to scan the QR code which seems a bit tacky. My fiancé, who is not vegan, was not provided with a menu explaining his meal options outside of what is presented on the chalk board which only shows the entrée and sides. We were very confused about what else would be brought out for him. The soup was great, the appetizers were great, the entrée and dessert, for both of us, was sadly incredibly underwhelming and nothing special. I had the jackfruit stuffed mushroom...I expected the mushroom to be chargrilled, to create a crunchy/smoky bed for the jackfruit. Instead it was all soggy, mushy and topped with a half of an avocado which just screamed lack of effort and creativity to me. Why not turn the avocado into some type of actual garnish instead of slapping it on top like a lump of laziness? The dessert...mine were three desserts...guava/mezcal panna cotta, which reminded me of a slimy version of a Colombian guava bocadillo, banana cake and peach cobbler-like thing which both lacked cohesion, flavor and moistness. My fiancé's dessert was churros. I thought it was really tacky to serve churros at that type of restaurant. Come on people, put some effort into it and reinvent the churro! I would have been good with the soup, appetizers and the drink which was probably the best part of the meal which was a cucumber spicy type drink and it was big so, it lasted the entire meal, which never happens for us. Needless to say, I could even get through 1/4 of my entree, I didn't even touch my second side (rice noodles?), the potatoes were alright, but seemed to be what I gravitated to the most. 100% not worth the money or effort. I guess people enjoy the view the most, but our reservation was at 9:30pm so there was no view for us. The audience was, superficial white people that don't know what else to do with their money, but spend it on substandard food. Would not recommend, it is the only part of our trip we regret. They should really do something different after sunset for late reservations who don't get a view and may not necessarily want to eat so much food that late at night, but still want a part of the experience. It just doesn't seem fair at all to expect people to pay the same amount of money if the experience isn't going to be the same, the the staff is tired and...