Criollo — Restaurant in Oaxaca

I hate leaving bad reviews, but i don’t want anyone else to get caught like we did. Although the service was quick and the waiters were nice, our food experience was not good and astonishingly overpriced.

When you reserve on the website there is a specific place where you can specify any food restriction, from which we picked vegetarian, as if they had an equally elaborated menu as the regular one for us. Upon arrival, they once again asked us if we had any restrictions, to which we replied that i am vegetarian but that my girlfriend doesn’t mind trying some seafood.

We had to reserve in advance without any price-point estimation, and were advised that we would be charged 250 pesos each if we canceled (you have to enter you credit card information). It’s only upon arrival that we were announced that the dinner would cost us either 1390 each (the clerk mistakenly told us 1300) for the food-only menu or 1900 each for the alcohol pairing option.

We would never have come if we knew how expensive this place was, but at this point we didn’t want to loose our deposits so we decided to stay and treat ourselves. Bad idea. The food was mostly cold, EXTREMELY small portioned, ok-tasting at best half of the time, and especially not filling for me who chose the vegetarian option (for example, on one of the main meals i got served was little 1/3 a banana on a spoonful of molle, another one was a tiny aubergine, and for some other one they only removed the caviar to make it vegetarian, not replacing it with anything else). I think this place says it accommodates vegetarians just to say it can, without actually making and effort to give them their money’s worth. My girlfriend sadly didn’t enjoy more than half of her meals either. We we left hungry.

When we politely explained the situation to the waitress, she said she could maybe ask the kitchen for an extra meal but could do nothing about the price we feel we got scammed about. Unfortunately I did not want any more food from this place and the disappointment was hitting hard at this point, we just wanted to leave.

Spare yourselves, there are so many better restaurants in Oaxaca and this is literally a restaurant surfing on it’s instagram account and...

WTLDR: 2/5 food, 3/5 service and 5/5 drinks. Recommend going just for drinks, but not the food. Wish we could say different as we had high hopes for this place.

Food: Probably the most underwhelming high-end restaurant experience I have had. It was very disappointing given that you do spend so much. What I have now heard from locals is that Criollo can be very hit or miss depending on the week (menu changes weekly). We absolutely got a bad week. The first dish started out well and then it went downhill from there until dessert. One dish they served was a take on ramen, which was WAY too salty and was overall a bad take. They also served an al pastor octopus taco. It was chewy and didn’t work (probably on the less than average side of tacos I have had)—very disappointing. They also served us a fish dish that was good, but honestly tasted more like something I’d get at a middle tier place in New York. Didn’t taste like anything Oaxacan other than the banana leaf they used to cook it. The cheesecake they served for dessert was over baked. The only saving grace was a slime sorbet that was served with it that was incredible. We also received a small tres leches cake since we were there celebrating my mom’s birthday. Also on the less than average side of tres leches cakes I’ve had—it was particularly very dry. We really wanted to like this place—we really tried, but with time we have realized it was the worst place we ate in Oaxaca (yet the most expensive). Recommend to skip, because it is costly at 1000+ pesos to hope that you get a good week.

Drinks: the best mixed drinks we had in oaxaca. Also, the agua fresca was one of the best I have ever had.

Service: good for the most part. However, there were a few times that our waiter took a while to come to our table to explain the dish even though the food had been there for a while. He spent a lot of time talking to the couple next to us and seemed rushed by the time he got to us. We also went on a slow night (the restaurant was half empty), so we didn’t really understand why this...

You only option is a six course tasting menu which is $1600 pesos or 2100 with the drink pairing. I generally love tasting menus and I was really excited to get a reservation here while we were in Oaxaca.

The food was good, it wasn't amazing. There was a fish in a broth with salsa verde that was incredible, and a noodle and bean salad with some original flavors, but the rest of the dishes were pretty average and honestly I'd had better tostadas our on the streets in Oaxaca.

The service to be honest was terrible. At one point we went 45 minutes between course, we were out of drinks and water and not one person checked on us. I ordered a drink and was given the wrong drink, we were charged for something we didn't order, and I asked for no dairy with my tasting menu which they accommodated with the first course but in the last course they gave me ice cream but by then we had been there over two and a half hours with basically no one paying attention to us for the last 90 minutes so we just wanted to leave.

As for the ambience, i hope. You love screaming children because they are tearing around the place like a playground, chasing chickens and catapulting themselves off of the Hammocks. When we said something they told it's us like that every night and there's nothing they can do if parents don't control their children so this seems to be a regular thing.

There are string lights throughout the tent and we were seated right at the edge of the tent. A bird pooped on our table at the beginning of the meal and then on us directly twice during the meal. We told the staff about this but were met with complete indifference. Not that I expect them to control the birds there, obviously they can't control their own wait staff or the children, but 3 times in one sitting hardly seems like an isolated incident.

All in all, quite disappointed in...