El Merkadito — Restaurant in Puerto Morelos

My server and service was awful. I came to the restaurant and picked out a fish and the restaurant was quite packed so I told my server that I’ll be sitting outside on the patio. So, 30 minutes later I went to her to order a drink that I never received and she acted totally clueless as if she didn’t just help me pick out a fish. I work in the service industry so I get it and it happens. I still wanted what I ordered so it was ok. So ,to top things off, my food finally came out 1 hour later but it was togo. I never once told her I wanted my food togo, so this a rude assumption made as if she didn’t want me to be a patron in the restaurant. Her excuse was in the night we don’t serve outside on the downstairs. My response was you should have said in the beginning and I never asked you to put my food togo. The server repeatedly said we don’t serve downstairs in the night and I said ok I’ll sit upstairs. Then I asked her to plate my food.

A few moments later another party came to sit on the downstairs patio and was served immediately. This made my blood boil even more. My initial server never came back to check on me and didn’t have the common decency to look me in face.

The food was ok but could have been better if it was to temperature and freshly out the oven. I’ll never come back due to the...

I wanted to wait a week or so before writing this review to gauge whether my review would be different, it's not. We were advised to come to this restaurant by the resort we were staying at if we wanted to have a local experience. We came during an off hour and were promptly seated. The server created us and took our order. Drinks were brought out and then we were forgotten. Not sure how long it took to prepare our meal (tacos and appetizers) we sat and waited. The view is very nice on the deck overlooking the pier and boats. We hadn't seen our server in a while so we asked another. She was surprised we hadn't got our order yet (probably 20 plus minutes). She found our server and she brought our food. It was as we suspected as it was not hot. It had been sitting for a while. We finished our order and asked for the check. It was in Pesos but I converted it and left a small tip to reflect our dissatisfaction with our service. I gave it in cash to the waitress who promptly asked for a larger tip. I told her no as our food was not as expected. I believe if it would have been promptly delivered (it was not a busy time) they would have been better. Anyways, the view is great, the beer is cold, and the guacamole was the best tasting I've had. Come for those items and set an average expectation...

This is not a bad review, I want to write this down here so the owners can consider some inclusion with people with dietary restrictions. We took our in-laws there when they arrived from Cancun Airport, they liked it a lot, they eat fish, however me and my partner don't. We are vegan, and we have been to plenty of fish/seafood restaurants before and they always have something vegan or manage to prepare grilled veggies, steamed veggies with rice, etc... This restaurant failed to do so. Their only vegan option was a double tortilla de maíz with like 5 onions and a spoonful of frozen veggies (not fresh but from the frozen bags). Honestly, we would rather stick with nothing than pay for what seemed absolutely ridiculous. The lemonade is not fresh, it's all fake lemon and the guacamole portion is super small, for one person although it costs quite significantly. The atmosphere is nice though, I believe the seafood is good too for what I have heard, but I wish they could consider options for people with dietary restrictions so we can come along with meat eaters when they choose this place. I hope this...