Copal Gastro Bar — Restaurant in Quintana Roo

This review has nothing to do with the food or atmosphere. The atmosphere looked quite nice and the menu on their website looked good. This is why we booked them for Christmas Eve.

When we arrived there they could not find our reservation so I showed them the confirmation from Open Table, which is where we were directed when we booked from their website. They were able to get us a seat, but when we were seated we were given a preset menu without any vegetarian options. When we told them no one informed us about the preset menu during booking or anytime after we were asked if we booked directly through the restaurant or online. When I said online they said that is why we were not informed. If they were not accepting online reservations for Christmas Eve they should have shut down their online reservations for the day. A note about a special Christmas Eve menu on their website would have helped as well.

I’m not writing this to discourage people from going. Just a caution that it may be worth contacting directly to make reservations or if making online to actually reach out to get confirmation they received the reservation and to ask if there is a special menu, especially...

The food was fine. We had a shrimp pasta with not too much flavour but a nice sauce. We also had the catch of the day which was juicy and had nice vegetables, but a lot of fish bones. However, at the start they wanted to welcome us with a tequila shot and they said it as if they were on the house. They ended up being on the check (360peso/18usd for the shots). Also, the catch of the day was close to a 1000 mxn peso (50usd). This is fine, but if the average maincourse on the menu is around 300 peso, it would be polite to at least mention that this fish is three times as expensive as other dishes. At the end, they asked what tip we wanted to give and suggested 15%. Weird suggestion after the waiter had already apologized for the food taking a long time. Alltogether: food is fine but they push you to spend as much money as possible in a not so polite way. We are people who always go to quite expensive restaurants so that’s not a problem, but at least be honest and fair...

Much like previous reviews - the surroundings and decor are nice but there is an underlying effort from staff to extract as much money as possible. That is not to say they were rude, per se, just the prices were high.

It quickly becomes apparent that you’re ‘just a tourist’ when offered extravagant items (massively inflated) for what they are. I must say this isn’t specific to Kokoro - outside of our amazing hotel, the commercial side of Mexico is somewhat lacking, as an example, the ‘locals discount’ proudly displayed in menus is shocking!

**cheapest bottle of white wine was £64 (it wasn’t a £64 bottle of wine!) - shouldn’t be so harsh but when being ripped off it’s hard to...