Kin Toh — Restaurant in Tulum

PROS Let me start by saying that the food was excellent and our waiters were very nice during dinner, making us feel comfortable and welcome and they all seemed to understand English.

MEDIUM This restaurant has three seatings: 6, 7:30, and 9:00 pm. OpenTable says that the restaurant has valet parking. When we arrived at 7:00, hoping to get a drink before dinner, the valet was there but there were no more parking spaces—I guess the 6:00 crowd filled up the lot. They told me to turn around, on this extremely busy narrow road, and go down 700 meters and find a spot on the side of the road. A bit of a pain, but at least the valet’s tip went to me.

This restaurant is very expensive and OpenTable says the dress code is “Formal,” which makes sense even for Tulum. I came with black slacks and a white linen shirt and my partner wore black leggings with a very dressy top. She looked great. The only problem was that we were nearly the only ones who weren’t in shorts and tee shirts—the guy at a nearby table was barefoot. Ok, no big deal.

Reviewers have said that Kin Toh didn’t have a wine list, but now they do. I saw an Italian wine I wanted to try and my partner wanted a Spanish Rioja. Both were by bottle or glass, so we decided to start with a glass of each. The “sommelier” brought two bottles of local Merlot and said they didn’t have any of the ones we wanted. They now have a wine list, just not the wines on the list. Still, not a big deal.

CONS I made a reservation on OpenTable for 7:30. When we arrived at 7:00 we planned to have a cocktail then dinner. The hostess told us that they did have my reservation, but to get a drink at the bar we had to pay a cover charge of $30 USD person even though we had a reservation. She said the balance of the $60, after the cost of our two drinks, would be credited to our dinner. We said ok and they charged my card for $60. I’ll come back to this later.

Next we went to the small bar area and sat for ten minutes before one of the four servers came over. We ordered two drinks and 15 minutes later got our Grey Goose on the rocks and a Manhattan. Fifteen minutes? It wasn’t even busy.

OpenTable says the noise level is “Quiet.” The reviewer must have been truly hard of hearing because they had a DJ playing repetitive House Music over and over, which was not only loud in the bar, but also piped into the dining areas.

We went to our table for dinner, after making sure they would credit the remainder our $60 to the final bill. They assured us that it would be. After dinner we were presented with a check for the full amount of our dinner with no credit. We asked politely why the credit wasn’t deducted and all of a sudden no one understood English. Nothing we could say would convince them. We were charged $60 plus the entire cost of dinner. Definitely a big deal!

We have multiple friends coming to visit during our 10 week stay in Akumal. We were hoping this would be our “go-to impressive” restaurant—we will have to keep looking and would not recommend this restaurant to anyone,...

Good food and strange service. There was a queue in front of the entrance of people who had reservation and those who did not. After 10 minutes wait the guy finally split the people. Sometime after we got inside. 10 min in a queue with reservation is a bit of too much. We booked the table month ahead, and got the seats far from window, although there was a table in a better place free almost entire time of our dinner. Guards all look like as if they work in Alkatras on important mission to verify and catch improper guests. Servants look a little bit not sure, as if were trained a little and before the training they never heard of aperitifs and digestives existence, so they hope inside that you will not ask anything complex. The guy came with the special smoke against insects and spreaded it in a half a meter from us. At least they could ask, I have asthma and I prefer to die from insects vs inability to breath. 4 times they asked about allergy without keeping this info. In reservation form, in confirmation form, at the entrance and also the servant; and such a thing as spreading the acrid smoke around me happened without concerns. Clearly shows they care only of themselves thinking maybe that guests will complaint of allergy as menu is quite exotic and ask for compensation, rather than caring of you. The final set of surprises happened at the bill time, of course;). It was not a size of the bill. It was clear to us that the place is not cheap. The surprise was to see the two bottles of water for 25 usd in the bill. Guys, why don’t you also sell bread and rent plates? And, then, the servant took our Visa card that my husband held in his hand, instead of bringing the pos machine, and went away. Your card security is not a concern for them, of course. We set speechless but again, this was not all. The final kill was the servant who came back with the machine check. Asking to sign it. The money - 350 usd for your understanding - was withdrawn without pin code!!! Bravo! Eventually we had to block the card as it made the usage absolutely unsecured. Plus 50 usd for reissue, on top. Thank you very much. The food was good but not outstanding. Desert not tasty at all although the servant described it as a best one. The curcuma flavoured butter cake frozen to the extend that we could not slice it and eat with the bread. The Gulf Shrimp dish had great shrimps, but too much fatty liquid in which the rice was floating like in the soup. The Tuna was too dry. Overall it is all about poor management or may be extreme level of arrogance, not clear what is real reason, but feels like the place to which you have a debt before even asking for anything, just that they allowed you to enter this sacral palace. Such a snobish attitude is very much felt in everything from 1st minute you arrive. Of course you still have good mood as the place is beautiful and food is good - but at the end there is a flavour of being robbed,...

This place is completely over-rated. Food was mediocre at best. This is a tourist trap. Run as fast as you can!

We had a regular reservation through open table for my 30th birthday, but we wanted to sit in the nice outdoor tables and upon inquiry we were told we would need to spend a minimum of $1,600 US dollars for the StarCatcher. It was only 4 of us, so I couldn’t imagine how we’d consume $1600 US of food and drinks. Well they knew exactly how they were going to make sure we consumed that and a little more. Keep reading.

First, the StarCatcher had a beautiful view of the sun set— the architecture is truly breath taking. But as soon as the sun went down our terrible experience began. Once it went dark the only source of light was coming from 6 dimly lit small candles on the table. As you can imagine it was windy and very dark. The candles were not providing enough light for us to see the food and they kept going out because of the wind. I would think that a place so expensive would have proper lighting in place so that people could see the food.

Then they asked what we wanted to drink and I requested what I always drink a bottle of champagne, Veuve Clicquot. Instead of bringing the bottle he summons the restaurants in -house Sommelier, who proceeded to recommend that we get a better bottle of champagne, after all it’s my birthday and I have such a large allowance to spend. He recommend I go with their most exclusive bottle, I really just wanted the Veuve, but the it was my birthday and he sold the bottle hard. So I accepted and was eager to find out what this exclusive French champagne bottle looked like. As soon as he brought to the table I asked to take a picture of the label. I looked it up right on the spot and turns out it was not exclusive at all and I could have ordered a case to my house for way less then the $800 US they charged us for the bottle. It was a $110 US bottle of champagne online. My night was ruined after that. What a total rip-off!

The food was just okay. They were missing a bunch of things from the menu. And the waiter never came back to take any additional drink orders we ended up spending over the $1600.

I had high hopes for such a beautiful looking restaurant, but walked away disappointed and feeling taken advantaged of. I travel all over the world and this by far has been the worst dinning experience in terms of value.

This place is tourist trap and I’d only recommend it if you wanted to check out the architecture and have a drink at the bar.

They have A LOT of work to do to improve the customer experience. Did I mention it was my 30th birthday, because not only did they fail to do anything special for it, they completely...