Kalin's Mexican Cuisine — Restaurant in Aruba

TERRIBLE SERVICE! One host, one waiter, one bartender, one busser/food runner for an entire outdoor restaurant. Both my friend and I work in restaurants, so we have patience with these things. The restaurant seemed welcoming and decently quiet so we approached the host stand and asked if there were any tables for two available without a reservation. The host quickly glanced back at the half empty restaurant, rolled her eyes, asked if we had a reservation even though we already stated we had not. She walked away with two menus directly after this, we weren’t sure whether to follow or not. She waved us quickly to the table- extremely unwelcoming. She put our menus down and did not say a word. 3 more tables were sat in our row, all served before us, which felt extremely personal. We waited 20 minutes to be asked what we would like to drink- not even water served before this. We decided to put our entire order in then since we had the time to browse the menu….thoroughly. We ordered 2 sodas, the nacho appetizer with chicken, and simple plain rice and chicken to share. The appetizer came out another 15 minutes later and get this…. STILL NO DRINKS! We asked if we could get our sodas or some water and they had been sitting behind the bar for quite some time so our sodas were watered down from the fully melted ice….yum. The nachos were good, we enjoyed them. We completely finished the nachos, which took us some time since we were chatting and they are quite big. We waited another 15-20 minutes after finishing that appetizer for our rice and chicken. The rice was either undercooked, dry, or old, quite hard. We decided at that point we didn’t even want to stay to eat that so we asked for a box and a bill. We were given a box and no bill. Sat for another 10 minutes. Waitress walks over to our table, put the card reader on the bill so we cannot see the charges, takes the card from my partner, asked us for a tip, when we hit no…..it was silence and ripping receipts from the machine from there. Definitely would never go again because of the service…. We understand understaffment can be an issue and we’re all about patience but when it feels personal, it stings. Oh also- the restaurant did not get busy after that. We were the “rush”, us and the 3 other tables in our row. Everyone else cleared out or were sitting waiting for their bill with a table full of...

I was really disappointed when we came here to eat. I was excited for the birria tacos but I have celiacs so I asked for them to be made with corn tortillas instead of flour (which are usually made with corn), which the waitress was not very nice about and said no. I then went to my second choice of the menu and the waitress said they did not have it. I then ran out of options and had the chicken enchiladas, which were absolutely horrible. The sauce tasted awful, and the chicken was so dry it tasted like saw dust.

My husband had some small steak thing that he had asked what it was but the very rude waitress rolled her eyes and said to read the menu because it was written there. All dishes say it comes with rice and beans but it sure does not. His came with a random square of something that he did not know what it was so he asked, which we then received an eye roll and scoff. She didn’t explain it at all to us so we didn’t know if I could try it or not because she would not explain anything.

The beans were in a tiny little cup the size of a shot glass and tasted like someone dumped an entire salt shaker in it. They were awful and completely inedible. The waitress then rolled her eyes again when we asked for salsa with our chips because the guacamole was so watered down and basically just chunks of raw onion and she said they didn’t have salsa.

The waitress also went on lunch break at a table IN VIEW OF US as soon as our food was delivered so we got no service for a good 40 minutes until the bartender stepped in. As another review said, this restaurant is an excellent location for another when this one fails.

The only redeeming quality was the drinks. But they were very expensive and has little to no alcohol in them, which a couple complained about while we were sitting there. When they complained they got very rude and argumentative responses and they ended up walking out.

10/10, would...

Horrible service:

7pm: my family of 4, 2 kids, my wife and I sit down

7:20pm: server comes to take our order

8:00pm: I ask to see the manager, manager never shows

8:15pm: food arrives

8:20: ask for the manager again, she comes over and I explained to her that our waiter had only been to see us once. I kindly tell her that the table behind us, who was seated at 7:40 had gotten water, napkins and their appetizers before we had gotten our food. I also told her that we didn’t need our food comped as we’re totally capable of paying for our own meal, but our server was MIA the whole time. She apologized and said she understood.

8:25: we finally get water and napkins for the table.

8:35: my wife walks over to the waiter and asks for the check

8:50: waiter arrives with the check and at this point I politely give him a piece of my mind, his excuse? They were really busy, but in reality he was busy taking care of everyone else, he was taking pictures for the table across from us and making sure everyone else was good.

In the 1 hour and 50 minutes we were there, we saw one table flipped 3 times. Our server never checked on us, we only saw him to give our order, receive our food and get the check. My wife had asked for chips, we waited, no chips. My wife asked again & the waiter acted as if it was his first time bein asked. We waited so long that my 8 year old cried because he was starving. We’ll never eat...