La Frontera Restaurante & Bar — Restaurant in Playa del Carmen

We were seeking local restaurants in Playa de Carmen. This was the one out of two restaurants we checked out that didn't increased their prices due to their hot/popular location. We ordered our drinks and guacamole immediately. The portion size resulted from 2 avocados seem smaller to me but I may be wrong. I ended up ordering twice. Then we ordered our main dish a few minutes later while we enjoying our appetizer. The service wait for the main dish was longer than usual. Ordinarly we would probably order another drink while waiting but we refused their offer. There is no drink menu. You may request a drink and if they have the ingredients, they will prepare it. My partner designed a margarita and it was good. In general, food was good. The tortillas were thinner in my opinion for tacos and usually in cases like that other restaurants I've been to will double them but they didn't. As a result, it took away from enjoying the full taco-eating experience. Our waiter was good; no bad experience there. There are performers/musicians who come around to play for each table and they request a tip. If you want a show, go for it. They will play 1-2 songs. But if you don't want a show, make sure you politely and firmly decline their offer as soon as they walk up to your table. Beware they may try to have you touch one of their authentic instruments to get you to change your mind. Additionally, if you have a big party of over 4 people, one person cannot solely be the tiper. They will ask the others at the table to contribute. There is also a photographer on-site. He will take a picture for your party at your table. Beware, the picture is not free. Although, he may state it is just to allure you. If you want the picture, get it. It's a nice souvenir of that night, however, if you don't want to purchase the picture, politely decline and walk away. Don't even look at the picture. The restaurant is on the top floor. There's a nice patio area. There are stairs and no elevators. The bathrooms were as neat as they could be. There's only one per gender. My rating is based on the overall experience with every factor taking into consideration. If you're in the downtown area of Playa del Carmen near the ferry entrance and you're looking for a Mexican restaurant without the touristic price, check them out just make sure you fully read this review prior to it....

I agree with the other reviewers. There was a "tax" on the bill, I think in our case about 80 pesos. We usually know approximately what the total of ordered food will cost, so we were surprised that it did cost quite a bit more than we expected. We payed it anyway, even more, because we wanted to leave quickly. So for the rest of the experience: We were drawn in by the guy waving around the menu aggressively in front of the restaurant. We initially wanted to eat somewhere else, which turned out to be closed, so we were hungry and just wanted to eat something. The food pictures in the extensive menu did not look very tasty, but we waved it off as the work of an untalented photographer. The plates were already on the table and dusty. We got some free nachos with a spicy green sauce, probably jalapeño, and some other sauce. The salad we ordered arrived on a separate plate and we ended up sharing it directly from that plate to avoid the dirty plates. The cesar salad we had ordered turned out to be big salad leaves with some croutons, grated parmesan cheese and a bottle of storebought cesar salad dressing. It was ok. As a main course, I had quesadillas, wich unexpectedly came with beans and rice and no guacamole. Everything was a bit bland, but also ok to eat. However my boyfriend was less lucky: He had ordered a new york steak, well done because at the time we ordered, we were already a bit skeptical. It came with vegetables and a oven potato, which my boyfriend said were good. The steak though... In my boyfriend's words: "I don't think I will like meat ever again". Location is quite nice and you can watch people on the 5th avenue from the first floor, which was the main reason we gave in and decided to give this restaurant a try. Our waiter was friendly too or at least we thought so until the sneaky "tax" thing came to our attention. That's simply a no-go. Go elsewhere, there are plenty better, cheaper and more honest...

If I could give La Frontera 0 stars, I would. Let's just say the whole experience was sad, after being enticed with a fish, calamari, shrimp and lobster meal that seemed to be a reasonable deal. The experience resulted in an hour wait for food with only 3 tables in service; no one checks on you in between the wait; the atmosphere leaves you a little sketched out by the decor, to then receive poorly prepared food -- the only thing that was fresh was the red snapper. Not only did we have this experience, but it was topped off with an unexpected additional "tax" -- approximately 13% -- that in Playa del Carmen is already included in the plate price. The servers also asked for our driver's licenses, and a 10% additional charge for using our credit cards, so that they could write down our license numbers -- prime way to get your ID stolen; our hotel concierge said that is NEVER supposed to happen. So a meal that was supposed to be approximately 750 pesos, became a bill for 1100 pesos, with the nasty attitude of the service staff because our licenses were...