Agua & Sal — Restaurant in Mexico City

This was overall a disappointing dinner experience. Food was underwhelming and the service was catastrophic. I do not recommend this unsophisticated restaurant for anyone who enjoys food.

THE FOOD: Generally they were too salty, as if having “sal” in the restaurant’s name is not enough. And we were quite surprised as a seafood restaurant, some of the ingredients were not fresh. Not to mention the flavor and seasoning lacks finesse.

Cebiche a la leña: This was the better dish of the night. It has a dramatic smoke effect and the waiter pours the sauce in front of you. It is creative with sautéed shrimps and the flavor does have a smoky kick. But it was a bit too salty and the saltiness overpowered the other flavors. It was a pity because I do see the potential of this dish.

Sopa verde de mariscos: Things started to get worse as this soup was more salty than the ceviche. And the pepper flavor dominated the whole dish, as a result the overall taste became reminiscent of instant noodle soup. The taste lack nuances here. But the true letdown was the advertised 6oz mussels. They turned out to be just 2 tiny mussels and sadly they were not fresh at all. The meat was powdery. I was appalled.

Plancha del mar: The waiter had such a proud smile when we ordered this. It looked promising when it arrived with all the sizzle. However, this was the most salty dish of the night, even the tasteless rice that came with it could not save the dish. I didn’t taste the sweetness / freshness in the seafood. In comparison, those carelessly-cut calamari rings didn’t seem like an issue at all.

THE SERVICE: The service started with being careless. When things accumulated I started to find it amusing just to observe. And finally the service escalated to being annoying.

In the very beginning when someone from the kitchen sent us the tostada and sauce, he explained in details the ingredients of three sauces in Spanish. Our Spanish was limited but we still appreciate the effort. But our waiter came and waved this guy away and just told us which one is more spicy.

After this, no further explanation were given for all the dishes.

The meal then began with us setting our table by ourselves, which was no big deal. After ceviche the waiter came to change our forks. I always appreciate changing forks and knives between dishes, but the waiter was so clumsy. He found he had the wrong cutlery and just threw what he had on our table first and left…

Things became amusing when the soup came. Somehow the bowls were too hot for the waiter to handle so the soup came to our table in an emergency fashion. It seemed like before he kindly alerted us, he had already wounded by it. It’s like the waiter was sabotaged by his own restaurant.

When the main dish came, there was no more changing cutlery anymore. And then something unprecedented happened: instead of changing a new plate, the waiter cleared the shells of the mussels out of my own plate, with his bare hands… like he came up with this brilliant idea in an emergency…

The service got really annoying at the end when I put my finger on the credit card machine (number 2) to politely leave a 10% tip (although anything less than that wouldn’t be unfair), the waiter went faster than me and pressed number 3 for 15%. And then he quickly pressed YES to proceed the transaction while I was apparently in the middle of reading what the credit card machine said, leaving me no chance to revert.

The waiter was most competent without any clumsiness at this particular moment at the end. Oh well.

The whole experience shows the management/owner does not care for the quality of the food nor the service. No proper training nor consistency not to mention quality control. You can observe the carelessness and unsophistication in every respect of this restaurant. Therefore anyone looking for good food and consistent dining experience is suggested to stay away from...

My partner & I are visiting family & friends in Mexico City. I was craving octopus or pulpo (I am supposed to be practicing my Spanish) lol. I stumbled upon Agua y Sal and I am happy I did. Omg! The restaurant is beautiful. The service is top of the line & the food is why you spend your hard earned money. We ordered two hot appetizers, the anticuchos de pulpo which is to die for. The pulpo is cooked to perfection the potato purée is great it also has a sweet & sour glaze that adds so much flavor to the dish. We also order the mejillones which was also fantastic! The mussels are cooked well and the curry broth is lighter than I thought it was going to be... which was nice. For entrees we ordered the fish (pescado a la talla) the fish was grilled in a red sauce which also came with red onions that were marinated in habanero chills... its not as hot as it sounds... it was a perfect amount of heat. We also ordered the plancha Del Mar which is a skillet (like a fajita) with shrimp, octopus, calamari, fish, and season vegetables cooked in a white wine sauce. It was so delicious! Both dishes came with rice and hand made tortillas. We also ordered a nice bottle of white wine to pair with our seafood. We finished the night with churros and of course more wine! The perfect ending to...

We stumbled upon this place while searching for a place to eat in Polanco. If you stay at Hyatt Regency, you’ll find this restaurant across the street. What we ate here:

Ceviche sampler (10/10) - super fresh seafood, good portion for the price.

Esquites con camarones (8/10) - loved the corn texture, however it’d fill up your stomach quickly so I would not recommend if you wanted to try different things.

Seafood platter (9/10) - flavorful, buttery, fresh bouncy seafood. We wanted to give this a 10 but we were so full from the corn earlier. It also came with white rice. I hate to say this but if you are Asian, you might not enjoy the rice here, which was part of the reasons why I gave this a 9

Servers were attentive and always checking up on us. I find it funny that they understood my conversation with my husband, in a language that was not English nor Spanish. We were wondering what the red stringy things in the seafood platter were and the server that stood next to me pointed out: ‘they are shredded red pepper’. I laughed so hard. Service and Linguistic...