La Taberna — Restaurant in Playa del Carmen

I have been eating at this place since the year 1999, There was a lot of changes during 25 years. Last night was the worst experience at this place. Let's start from the beginning. The food was OK, nothing special, regular flavors from mediocre ingredients. The prices are regular, not so expensive, not so cheap. The service is great, I may say "Excellent" but not quite. You get good attention and everybody is willing so serve you. But BEWARE: the trick is at the bill. When you ask for the check, you get billed with 25% TIP added. I paid the food and added 5% tip ( I usually leave 15% to 20% but this time I didn't appreciate the "I will take a 25% tip without your consent" behavior.) Well, I paid in cash, but waiter came back asking me for more money because they wanted the total amount PLUS 25% tip, not just the amount and 5% Tip. I told them about the total amount and 5% additional as gratitude and that's all I was willing to pay. Well the waiter says that they have to PAY a 12% of the amount to the management/owner of the restaurant and, if I don't pay 25% TIP, they have to put money from their pocket (Which obviously sounds nonsense and illegal)

Well, Long story short: They bill you with the 25%...

As I got up to move to another table, my wife's purse was stolen from the back of her chair. The manager did help us call the police, but overall seemed relatively unconcerned. Another woman's phone was stolen as well, we used the "find my phone" app to try to locate the phone with the help of police, but the thieves turned off the phone before driving it 22 miles north on the way to Cancun.

We were there to watch a UFC pay-per-view, Daniel Cormier vs Stipe Miocic. The fight was on 2 of the 11 TVs with no audio, and a talk show with no audio was on all of the other TVs. Before my wife's purse was stolen, I asked three times to have the TV station changed on some of the other TVs, which was never done for me.

After chasing thieves for thirty minutes with la policia turística, we went to The Handle Bar nearby which had very friendly staff and were broadcasting the fight with audio.

I don't see any reason to come the La Taberna, but if you do, be careful. After explaining the whole situation to the manager (in Spanish) all he had to say to me was "sorry friend, lots of people." (Disculpa amigo, mucha gente). Not...

We were here to watch a sports game and have some drinks. Something we had been doing at many other bars all week. We were told that we needed to order food to get drinks. We had just eaten dinner and were all full. They let us wait 30 mins before ordering and then later on we needed to order more food. We ended up getting the potato skins and onion rings and my theory for this requirement, that doesn't exist most places, is their food is so awful it's the only way they can get rid of it. Bar food isn't that hard nor has high expectations. None in our group ate more than one bite of the onion rings. The dip, the onion, the breading, all the worst I've ever had. The drinks are pretty cheap until you consider food cost you didn't want. They were quick on the service and nice bathrooms were...