Encore Restaurant & Jazz Lounge Bucerias — Restaurant in Nayarit

Edit: February 2024. Back again. Everything is awesome as always....see.below.

Edit: February 2023. I have returned with my wife again. Service, food and atmosphere is still amazing.

August 2020. Soft, slow playing jazz music in the background, lush greenery and stone walls make for a welcoming and relaxing environment. The plastic chairs are a bit cheesy though. Lunch menu gives a good selection with plenty of salads, appetizers and sandwiches to choose from. The wine menu is equally good with lots of reds and whites from various regions. Overall a good first impression.

Ordered the steak sandwich. Fries are well seasoned. I hate boring fries and these do not disappoint at all. A1 sauce, ketchup, mustard and hot sauce (the hot sauce is actually hot!!! And delicious) all came to the table as well. I only used the hot sauce 😁. I took a small piece of the steak off to taste it on its own and it is a good cut, juicy and tender. Excellent flavour. The bun is grilled but still soft in the middle. Sautéed onions are well done and pack excellent flavour. As far as the sandwich goes as a whole it is well put together with generous flavour. To top it all off the price is very reasonable at $180 pesos.

Service was excellent. The waiter was attentive without hovering and very responsive when I needed something.

I am very impressed and will be back before I go home to Canada. The reason for the 4 star rating rather than 5 stars is the plastic chairs and my sandwich was supposed to come with sautéed mushrooms but there are none on it.

Check this place out while you...

I'm trying hard to give this three stars. The meal appeared in less than five minutes from ordering. My partner had the coconut shrimp which looked and tasted manufactured and re-heated. I had the ten ounce NY steak. It was rather thin and smaller than I would have expected. The outside was nicely blackened, but the inside was rare and barely warm. My best guess was that this steak was thrown on the grill frozen. I ordered it as medium, and in a literal sense that was probably the average doneness of the meat. Tough and not tasty.

Good music, but not my place for food.

One more thing. Some kind of biting insects live here. My partner was wearing a dress and her bare legs were totally bitten before the waiter came with a bottle of insect repellant spray. He explained that mosquitos lived in the plants along the edge of the room. I didn't see any mosquitos and think they may be some smaller biting fly or insect, but it's beyond...

We went twice for happy hour. First time was good enjoyed the food and drinks . Server( chewy?) was chatty and attentive .Second time was horrible.Drinks had no noticeable alcohol in it Server, same as before, was nowhere to be found for second round, food order or bill. We had to get up and search for him every time. When the bill came, happy hour discount was applied to only half of it. The whole situation felt like a total rip off. We will never go back

Update after owner response Big question. What does your happy hour time have to do with bad service and watery drinks ? We went during your happy hour time. But I guess people know already how bad it is to come during happy hour because your place was empty every time we came or walked by, while other places are busy...