Cantina Mexicana — Restaurant in Groningen

Atmosphere: Looks fun and inviting; the seating arrangement is cozy and perfect for small groups or a romantic dinner.

Food: Reasonable, varied selection. If you're looking for authentic Mexican food or outstanding taste, however, you won't find those here. Authenticity aside, the taste quality has gone from good to flavorless over the past couple of years. Maybe some unfortunate souls complained about the dishes being too tasty. Some menu items have remained quite good though, like the nachos and guacamole, but some others just taste like wet cardboard these days. Let's face it, we all can make plain, virtually unseasoned black beans and rice at home - and I'm sure you're able to chop your own iceberg lettuce without a trip to the ER.

Service: Sporadic. Inattentive. Understaffed? A small group of us made reservations recently. We were told over the phone that we would have 2 hours to eat and leave before the next reservation group arrived. No problem, right?

Our orders were taken in a timely manner and our first round of drinks delivered in a reasonable amount of time. Nearly 45 minutes passed before someone showed up to take our second drink order. Our food still hadn't arrived, but no one was fussed as we've all been servers before and understood about getting slammed, groups sucking, etc.

1 hour and 10 minutes after our orders were taken (we’d already been in the restaurant for about 1 hour 20 mins or so), our meals were served - with the exception of 1, which the server forgot to write down or something. Without so much as an apology or an offer for a drink refill, the server ran off - presumably to put in the missing order. 30 minutes later, and pressed for time before the next reservation group came in, our lone party member hurriedly ate his dish as we sat looking at our empty glasses, waiting for him to finish so we could leave.

My guess is they missed out on a couple hundred euros of drink orders, a large tip and returning customers. Next time I'll just spend the cash on a weeks' worth of amazing groceries and cook for our out of town guests. If this was a one time occurrence, I would perhaps understand – however, nights like this seem to be the standard in my experience. You’d think I would have learned my lesson the past 3 or 4 times.

TL:DR - Bottom line: if I want to self-serve, eat substandard food and get treated like a burden in the process, well, I can get all that at home - and for much less. (Hi, kids!) Save yourself the money ;)

(This isn't even including the forgotten utensils, menus and oddly...

As the restaurant might look a bit odd in the street view and it doesn't really draw you in the inside is super nice and cozy. The food that was served was of high quality. We had chicken fajitas and spareribs to eat. I like to come here as in my opinion it probably has the best spare ribs in the city as they use their own special sauce to season the ribs, so if ribs are your thing? you should definitely try this place. Portions are massive so you don't even need to go big, I rarely see people finish the regular size plates. When it comes to staff they are extremely friendly and helpful to a point where you start to wonder if they get to cuddle puppies in the back. If so I'd like to have a taste of that as well. For me it's not 5 out of 5 cause I feel the quality of the side dishes was just average if they improve a bit on those I'll 5 star...

Went in the hope of getting some genuine Mexican flavours, but hope was not enough. Ingredients did not feel particularly fresh, but even more noticeable was the lack of any flavours: No Lime, coriander, chillies, or other spices for that mater. Quanta was no issue, so if you’re willing to eat; you would be fed… Service was decent enough. Children’s play room was a nice idea, but very shabby, holes in the walls and the general feeling of never being cleaned, not to mention the staff changing room entrance (you could see into the room) in the same place. The venue otherwise went for run down Mexican look, was very dark, cramped and noisy. Only upside was the knowledge that I will...