Viva Mexico — Restaurant in North Island

Had a very unpleasant experience here tonight. I have been here before quite few times with no problems. Last time I was here I ordered an entree for $15 and it was quite big and I was pleased with it, so tonight I was pretty disappointed when I ordered the stuffed jalapenos for $15 and was given four that were smaller than marshmellows. Considering that at other Wellington cafes and restaurants they normally charge you $10 and give you around 6 decent sized jalapenos, I was underwhelmed and so was my table. My friend asked the staff if I could swap it for another dish of the same price, and they suggested that maybe they could bulk it up, which I was happy with.

I would have been perfectly satisfied with that and that would have been the end of the story and I would have had a pleasant evening with my group. However, a very rude staff member thought it appropriate to come and give me a very cold lecture about how they ship their food in from Mexico (not relevant) and I should make a better decision next time if I'm not happy. He also made some sort of comment about not eating here if I can't afford it which was very rude. It was unnecessary, terrible customer service and it made the rest of the night very uncomfortable, not only for me, but for my whole table who agreed it was an unnecessary thing to lecture a customer. If you aren't able to be hospitable, maybe don't get into hospitality and customer service work. Had it not been for this very rude man, perhaps there would be a next time and I would choose another meal and continue to be a regular customer, but because of him I definitely won't be returning and will be advising against this place to...

Disappointment to the Max!

I read many reviews of this place praising its food. Nothing would do but that we try it. Mexican food is not easy to find in NZ, and good Mexican food even harder to find. We were really pumped up to go.

I ordered the guacamole and chips, followed by tortilla soup, followed by zarape mexicano. If I had wanted stuff that I could buy at the supermarket, I would have gone to the supermarket. Mexican food should be freshly prepared from fresh ingredients, not come from a can. The guacamole was nothing like guacamole should be -- fresh mashed avocado. It was the same runny stuff you can buy in any grocery store. I cannot figure out how that is made, but yucch!

The tortilla soup was actually pretty good. I liked it -- it almost approached the best I have had in Guadalajara. The serving was generous. Very nice, I recommend it.

The zarape mexicano was an unfamiliar dish to me -- wish it still was unfamiliar. From the description I hoped it might be like the chile verde that I like from California, cubes of pork marinated and slow-cooked in thick green chile sauce. Instead I got dry shredded pork in a tortilla wrapper with some thin greenish sauce from a can poured over it. Not appealing at all. I had to leave half the dish on the plate, just could not force it down.

We had churros (without the stuffing) for dessert, and they were really nice. Served hot and covered with sugar and spices.

My wife did not enjoy her main, either. We were both...

We had dinner here lastnight for my birthday and ever since our favourite mexican restaraunt closed down (Mexican Cafe opposite newtown hospital) we have failed to find one as good them until now!! Everything we tried was absolutely amazing and we left completely stuffed and happy! The only reason I am not giving a 5 star rating is you had taken two relatively big group bookings (Ours was a booking for 14 and there was another booking for about 10 people behind us) and you didn't have adequate amount of dessert to fulfill the amount of people dining in your restaurant. Once we got to dessert, the option of churros was completely gone which was really disappointing for me as this was what I was looking forward to the most. The wait for the food was a little bit longer than we had hoped for as well. Maybe a suggestion of either getting extra staff/food in when having more than one big group or maybe not taking more than one big group booking? We would've much rather been told to book in for another night and be able to have everything that we wanted (including churros!) and not have to wait as long. But overall, very very...