La Casa del Mendrugo — Restaurant in Puebla

Positives:

Beautiful restaurant. Upscale.with in general upscale customers. Great looking menu. Great Atmosphere and music.

Negatives and my experience:

Although we had a great table near the piano, what happened beyond that was sketchy, not appreciated and maybe a warning to others.

The waiter tried to rush us. I handled this, but not cool at a restaurant like this.

The waiter made suggestions but only the most expensive items on the menu only. He was pushing these before we even received our cocktails.

They played stupid when we asked for filtered water, agua filtrada. They brought us bottled water instead. This was beginning to feel like a battle.

We order two drinks. A cosmopolitan and a caipirinha. We were served two drinks each in the proper glass but with the same fluid in each and neither the drink we ordered and no garnish. These drinks are listed in the menu.

Then right after sending back the drinks the hostess seats a family with a stroller and a misbehaved 4 or 5 year old with a voice that screamed everything he said, right next to us  imagine a beautiful expensive restaurant with quiet couples and groups enjoying a weekend evening dining experience and they sit a family with a screaming kid, with acoustics that project the sound to all tables, right next to you.

I told the waiter we were leaving. Then more battle. They want to sit us in an empty room off the dining room where the kid could still be clearly heard.

An expensive restaurants where the staff is so ignorant as to not sit the terrible selfish people who would bring their misbehaved child to ruin everyones meal in another room, but sit them with existing diners and expect the diners to move!

To add insult to injury, the waiter who agreed seating the disruption was a bad idea, suggested I should at keast pay for the drinks we never even got or tasted!

At that point I felt like I was part of a Franz Kafka novel.

We told them we would come back another time, that it was a special evening and we did not want to have to pay for a miserable evening. However the more I thought about my total experience, hell no to a return. Really, for such a nice restaurant You would expect much betterit should only receive one star. Follow up: We accidentally returned for breakfast and had a worse experience. Argh... See...

Extremely mixed experience here, unfortunately.

Ordered two cervezas artesanales. They arrived after the food (15 minutes or so). The IPA is the single worst IPA I've ever had (I've been a professional brewer for 10 years). I have no idea who is making this, but it wasn't just poorly crafted, it was infected. Check your heat exchanger, it need to be cleaned.

The Jamon Ibérico de Atlixco tasted amazing but was cut sloppily. The thin pieceselt in your mouth, but the thick ones were chewy like gum. You need to carve this consistently thin for 690 pesos. The olive oil it is served with is low quality, no grassy notes, just cheap canned olive oil.

The tortilla soup was excellent. Perfectly crispy, amazing broth.

The tuna tratare was not good. The menu says it comes with a ponzu sauce, but in reality it's a tableside DIY with salsa Maggi and English sauce. The result is an badly oversalted mess. Get rid of the cheap condiments and go back to ponzu, check the seasoning and serve it plated. There is no reason for this to be a DIY dish.

The servers were not very at tenting, coming only to drop off food and bring the check, never checking on tables.

There is an air of chaos, it is not well orchestrated for the size of the place. The environment is lovely and there is a museum upstairs featuring mostly reproduction Egyptian artifacts (without listing them as reproductions).

All in all there is just too much corner cutting, it is a fair restaurant pretending to be fine dining. They could improve, and hopefully they will. They really need to start thinking about higher ditching low quality condiment grade items, and composing dishes in a way that allows...

we sat down and tried he tapas near the bar here one night and a sample of their in-house beers and it was all really good. Then we assumed their main restaurant would be just as good for dinner. We were wrong. Ordered the 'pork' soup even though I was told it's beef when it came out and it was too salty. Also tried one of the apps with cheese and chorizo. I thought it'll be en entire chorizo cut in slices with some cheese on top. It was the opposite. Close to a pound of different cheese fried in a cast iron pan with small pieces of chorizo inside, some tortillas, green peppers and a little bit of guac = $175 pesos (too much!). My spouse tried the seafood pasta--this and the IPA beer I ordered were the only tasty things we ordered. The beer had to be sent back the first time because it wasn't cold enough. Our bill was 542 pesos. I've traveled to over 40 countries and have eaten at numerous restaurants. I wouldn't return here. I felt like we overpaid for what we got (in Puebla anyway). The food didn't impress me at all for the prices. There are way better restaurants in Puebla for much less than that and even for that much. I suggest...