La Recova Santa Lucía — Restaurant in Mérida

This is a long review, as I have been "robbed" in multiple ways by this restaurant. I was there for New Year's Eve. We do not speak Spanish, however our server did not speak English while some other servers did. They clearly could have given us a English speaking server, but whatever... We ordered two glasses of wine, and when they were finished, I told the server he could take our glasses. He came back with two new glasses that we did not want, pretending he misunderstood us. He did not want to take them back, seemed confused, and then said they were "on the house", as if he accepted his mistake and offered us the glasses. When the bill came, we had to pay the glasses (we actually did not even drink them). The manager came and told us we had to pay, and the server pretended he never said it was "on the house", acting like he was totally surprised of what I was saying. So, we got robbed ~250 pesos for the two glasses we did not want. We did not want to fight with them and I paid. We asked for a copy of the receipt but this same server did not want to give one to us, pretending he could not make a copy. We had a brief look at the bill and did not see anything wrong at first, the server was in a hurry to take the detailed bill away from us. The server gave himself 0 pesos of "propina" (tip) on the payment terminal when I paid using credit card. (which I found weird, why would he give himself 0 tip without even asking me). Finally, as I got home, I thought about the amount I paid, and I am sure I paid about 900 pesos more than the total of our orders (including the unwanted drinks), which is 40USD. I am almost certain that they charged me a 40USD tip that they have hidden in the bill, which explains why the server was trying to take the receipt away from me when I looked at it. To conclude, food was okay but extremely expensive for a place like Mexico (I paid 200 USD for the evening), and among these 200USD, I was...

Absurdly rude behaviour by the waiter.

We went to another place first (Mercado 60, lovely place to eat, 10/10 recommend) but my husband kept thinking about the pasta carbonara he’d seen earlier on the La Recova menu (we walked by earlier). So we went after our dinner so he could get the pasta as well. He got the pasta and we both got a drink. We were there for approximately 30 minutes in total. The pasta was dissapointing and really tasted like nothing, but the waiter was polite (at first). Even though we were there for only 30 minutes, a beer was $120 pesos (=approximately €6) and the food was way too expensive for the quality, we are too polite to not tip at all. So we still added some tip. The waiter took the bill with our cash and was already looking at it somewhat indignant, he didn’t say thank you or anything. About half a minute after he walked away, he walked back and proceeded to say “Sir, the bill didn’t include service”. My husband and I were flabbergasted and said “Yes it’s okay like this”. Instead of walking away, the waiter said “It’s normal to tip 10%”. Astonished and taken off guard my husband repeated himself with “It’s okay like this”. The waiter frowned and walked away.

Disgusting behaviour, I’ve never experienced something like this. Don’t visit this place.

Across from this restaurant there’s a really nice Italian restaurant we ate the day before, you should go there. It’s...

Tourist trap! Expensive, mediocre food and annoying service, which brings each spoon to the table individually, but does not care that the guests are bothered by street vendors. No drinks menu, beer costs $102 per bottle. Lasagna was small, too salty and tasted like from a discounter. Although we arrived very hungry, we only ate half of the miserably small lasagna, because it just became a mushy mass in the mouth, which became more and more while chewing. The spaghetti carbonara was fine, but was served with chicken strips that were too dry. Instead of the chicken strips we would have preferred to have more noodles, as these were rarely seen on the plate. Since we do not understand Spanish, we had not noticed that an automatic tip was already credited on the bill. The waiter was standing next to us very impatiently when we received the bill and gave the impression that we should pay quickly. Since we didn't want to be cheap Germans, we thought that we should at least "reward" the overeager staff with ~ $100 tip. On the way home we found out that a tip of about 15% had already been added. Altogether we ended up paying 1000$ for 2 beers and a disgusting and an okay meal. In other restaurants we had more and better food and more drinks for half of the money,...