Qulture — Restaurant in Jalisco

UPDATE: The artists at Qulture stepped up to resolve our issue, which shows how special this art community is and exemplifies what has drawn us to Qulture Galleries over the years.

I’ll leave the original post below for context, but the short story is that we bought a painting at Qulture in February 2024 from artist César Valencia who was displaying and selling art there as a guest artist, but not a resident artist (although he represented himself as being a resident artist including when we talked with him, via Google Maps listing his place of business at Qulture and two Facebook pages indicating he was an “artist at Qulture”). Trusting our previous positive experiences at Qulture, we paid US $650 for a large painting of a fish that Cesar agreed to ship to us, but the painting never arrived and Cesar told us it had been damaged in transit and he did not have the time or ability to fix it and re-send. He refused to refund our money or figure out a compromise and just took our money. Too much time had passed and our bank was unable to reverse the charges.

We brought this to the attention of Qulture via the original review below, and Qulture’s owner and the resident artists jumped into action to help resolve the situation. They were unable to obtain a refund from Cesar, but offered to paint and send us a replacement for the piece that we never received. A huge thanks to Barbara Stenz, Marg Heeney, Julia Swann and Gabriel who helped us resolve this issue and especially to Barbara Stenz, who graciously agreed to paint and ship us a replacement piece free of charge, which we received in November 2024.

What was originally an infuriating, disappointing and depressing ordeal that we thought would preclude us from ever wanting to go back to Qulture again turned out to be an example of the spirit and energy that drew us to Qulture and its artists in the first place. We are looking forward to returning to Qulture when we are in town early next year to thank everybody in person for rectifying this situation.

• ORIGINAL POST BELOW ** SCAMMED OUT OF $650US – BEWARE BUYING ART HERE! We bought an awesome large paining of a fish from César Valencia for over $650US and since it would have been expensive to ship on the frame, he suggested having him dismount and ship it as a roll since he had apparently done that with a client recently. We paid for the piece via credit card through Qulture and were excited to receive the piece in a few weeks.

A month went by and the piece had not arrived so we contacted César to see when it might arrive. He informed us that the piece had been damaged during shipping, but that he was going to pick it up from the shipping company, try to repair it, and then send it again. Several weeks went by with no word from him so we contacted him again and he said that he was busy and was trying to repair the piece, but that it would soon be done. Weeks went by again and when we contacted him for an update, he said he was too busy to repair the piece and send it back to us.

However, that was the last time we ever heard from him and he has been completely unresponsive to our multiple attempts to contact him for over two months now, as of the time of this review. It looks like we got scammed out of over $650, which at least to us, is a lot of money.

UPDATE: We finally heard back from Cesar after nearly three months and he refused to reimburse us any of our money or send us the painting that we bought. He called our request “ridiculous.” Again, so very sad, confused and disappointed by this experience at Qulture and Qulture Galleries with Julio César...

I was searching for "hot and new restaurants" in the area and Qulture was one of the listings that popped up. The food pics looked amazing, so we has to try them.

ATMOSPHERE: Located in an area of Zona Romántica I've never ventured into, sat one of the coolest restaurants I've been to in a while. A spacious courtyard with indoor & outdoor seating gives way to a central bar, open-view kitchen, and two levels of surrounding art galleries in individual rooms, akin to an apartment building. You can eat, browse and purchase art on the spot!

MENU: Mix of apps, salads, soups, pork, seafood, poultry, meat, desserts.

FOOD: Coconut Shrimp with Spicy Orange Marmalade IMO, coconuts belong on trees, not on shrimp. Opinion aside, the six pieces weren't overly coated with shreds of the stuff which made it palatable to me. Went well with the sweet chili sauce and fresh coleslaw.

Seafood Stuffed Portobello Mushroom No idea what kind of seafood was in this but it was really good. The single mushroom cap was piled pretty high with a moist "seafood" mixture and cheese.

Cream Cheese Stuffed Jalapeños The menu states "six peppers" but there were just three on the plate, stuffed with shredded pork and wrapped in bacon. Spice level was mild. Anything wrapped in bacon tastes good, right?

Bacon Blue Cheese Sliders Three sliders came to a plate. The patties were moist and juicy, topped with a big onion ring and blue cheese.

Shrimp Bisque Brovo for being served searing hot! The soup was ultra-rich, sweet and salty with tasty notes of char from the bits of shrimp. I couldn't finish the whole bowl due to the richness.

Bacon & Blue Cheese Wedge Salad The easiest-to-make-salad in the world was good here. Fresh, tasty dressing, but topped with too many red onions.

New England Style Crab Cakes The two patties looked great but were made up of too much onions and garlic and not enough crab meat. The only disappointment of the night.

Peppercorn Crusted Beef Tenderloin You can't go wrong with meat and potatoes! We asked for medium rare and got exactly that. The meat was flavorful and tender, the mashed potatoes silky and creamy.

Stuffed Pork Loin The portion was smallish but the taste and tenderness made up for it. The raspberry chipotle sauce gave the dish a nice balance of sweet and savory.

DESSERT: Chocolate Bread Pudding It was a big portion that the four of us couldn't finish. Moist, sweet and sinful. Thank you!

SERVICE: Everyone was fantastic, from Claudette to our server, to even the cleaning guy who assisted us in the days after our dinner with picking up a painting my spouse bought. Communication was flawless. The painting was stripped from its backing and bubble wrapped well for its journey to Maui.

OVERALL: Nice concept, affordable, delicious cuisine, outstanding service. A...

What an interesting place. Bar, restaurant, and art gallery. The hibiscus margarita (pictured) was a fun drink. All day Wednesday is happy hour. I also had the baja shrimp tacos, which were pretty good. I also enjoyed the music videos playing in the background. The staff were friendly. After we ate, we wandered around the galleries on both floors, looking at the artwork. Our only criticism is when we asked for the check, we were just told the amount without being shown the actual check. We asked to see the actual printed itemized check and were shown a slip of paper that showed a handwritten list of the things we had ordered, not the actual check. We didn't want to create a scene, so we accepted the amount. This is PV, we've had issues with incorrect checks before and extra items being added that we hadn't ordered. When we got back to our condo, I looked on their online menu to check if what we were charged looked correct, and I'm pleased to say it did. The situation could have been avoided if they had just shown us the itemized...