Catedral Restaurant — Restaurant in Oaxaca

Twenty six years ago, when it opened, Catedral might have been the talk of the town. Today it's a has been, an overpriced set piece, as cliched as Mama Leone's once was in New York City. But where to begin as there was so much wrong?

The place has one attractive, open-air room, and maybe a lower level lounge that could also be cool but was dark and not open. Next to that there is a small pedestrian room, like a room in a school, which leads to a large, overly bright room that looks, even 26 years ago, like it would have been outdated. They put me in the small school room when they realized my reservation was for a party of one, too small, they said, to be seated in the nice, open-air room. I accepted the downgrade; being a party of one what I wanted was a good meal, so it was okay. Kind of.

I ordered three dishes. A smoked shrimp taco, an organic tomato salad with basil dressing and "creamy" quesillo (a local cheese) and, for the entree, Oaxaca's famous Tlayuda with Grilled Beef. It was a sad day for Oaxaca when the food came out. The shrimp, good but distinctly over-salted, were properly sitting on a large tortilla with some chiles and would have made a decent taco but for the lack of any cohesive sauce or topping to pull it all together. But it all went to hell when the bed of melted cheese on which the whole thing sat started oozing out. How did melted cheese get in my taco, I wondered, with nary a mention of cheese on the menu.

I ate it and hoped for better. Unfortunately the tomato salad was so bad I sent it back. How do you make a bad tomato salad in a country rife with ripe tomatoes? There was one pithy tomato, NO BASIL at all, and three slices of rubber. The rubber was supposed to be the creamy quesillo, I guess. Worse! The dressing was gawd-awful; just some tiny capers out of a jar, with their jar-juice, and a few specks of something green. And the rubber was sauced with some nasty dark red stuff. I sent it back, telling the waiter that it was inedible, and why.

The Tlayuda, Oaxaca's pride and joy, was to Tlayudas what Mama Leoni's lasagna was to my grandmother's., i.e., an abomination. Though it was filled very generously with beef, considering its quality, it seemed more a surreptitious way to get rid of bad meat than a wish to serve a good meal. And it was dry beyond imagining. Well, perhaps not, imagine a mouthful of dessert sand. In desperation, I took out the meat. Next, I poured in all three ramekins of salsa they had placed on the table. The dryness remained implacable.

I asked for the check. $1540.00 Mexican. (About $85 US). Plus tip. And they had charged for the inedible salad!

To add insult to injury, as I went through the "nice" room on my way out, I saw a single man seated solo at one of the tables. One of the tables they wouldn't give me. Not that such a table, in the "nice" room, would have made the food any...

TLDR: Good service, fantastic atmosphere. Reserve a spot in the patio.

I learned about Catedral Restaurant from a Youtube video I watched before visiting Oaxaca, so it was on my list even before we arrived. When we arrived to preview the place, we saw that the place to sit was in the patio area.

Saturday afternoon we arrived at four to reserve a spot in the patio for later that night, and we learned that the patio was booked for the rest of the evening. No problem, we reserved for Sunday evening instead.

When we arrived Sunday, we were greeted warmly by the pleasant hostess. We sat at our table and the wait staff took our drinks order and gave us time to read the menu. The lighting in the evening was dim, but not dark, and the setting in the historical colonial house was wonderful.

Since before we arrived, there was a solo musician singing and playing romantic songs on the guitar. The volume and tone of the music were perfect for the setting, and this entertainer was what bumped up my rating to five stars from what would otherwise have been a solid four stars.

The menu was diverse but did not really include many of what we would consider standard options for children who may be picky eaters. That said, I felt the more complex plates represented a wonderful fusion of traditional Oaxacan cuisine with a modern gastronomic twist. The food, in general was very good. We thought the "lechon" was a little underwhelming, but the "moles" were very good.

The wait staff could have been a little more attentive. After opening our wine bottle, they served us a glass and left the bottle in a chiller near the table. They never came back to refill our glasses, and once we emptied the bottle, they did not ask us if we would like another. Also, I'm used to waiters at nicer places carrying a table cloth scraper to sweep up crumbs, but our crumbs just lingered.

The negatives are not that bad. As I said, I still would have given this place a four-star review if it had not been for that awesome singer and the beautiful patio we dined in. We dined at a couple other well-rated restaurants while in Oaxaca, and this one was head and shoulders...

Wow. I am not sure what sort of dining experience I had. Maybe writing it out will help me process what I just ate. This restaurant came highly recommended by a local. We've eaten at several other, amazing restaurants so we thought it was time to dive into Catedral for our Christmas Eve dinner. First and foremost, the ambiance was pleasant but a bit dated (my grandma would think it's fancy) in comparison to other local restaurants that have embraced the more rustic look of the area. As we worked our way through our courses (not finishing any of them), each plate became more and more perplexing in terms of odd food combinations, quality of the food we were eating, the off flavors and the presentation. To sum it up, it was as though we were eating overly salted, nursing home food. My partner and I are very food/restaurant forgiving but as I watched the look on his face after each bite, I could tell we were thinking the same thing. We've given many restaurants a second chance but this one is not getting another peso from us. Our opinions were confirmed by the young couple sitting next to us as we all discreetly discussed how gross the food was. Don't even get me started on the prices! We paid 5800 pesos plus tip for the most horrible food experience of our lives and here I sit, hoping to god, I don't get food poisoning from the one rubbery, weird tasting mussel I ate. UGH! Save your money and time. Go to Criollo or Ancestral if you want mind blowing food for a fraction of what this cost, along with killer ambiance that matches the flavor and...