Casa Mexicana — Restaurant in Bristol

I visited Casa Mexicana for the first time today with my sisters to celebrate our baby sisters birthday. When we arrived the restaurant had pleasant decor and we were given a table with a window view. All seemed ok, including the staff they were not overly friendly or ignorant. However, after we'd tasted the main meals we struggled to eat it all. My sister's slow braised lamb was too pink for her liking so we asked for it to be cooked more. The initial taste of slimy, too rare lamb for my sister put her off and after a few mouthfuls she stopped eating. Shredded pork was also ordered and we found this to be too dry and tasted believe or not of SWEAT!!! Gross, I know!!! Finally, my meal was the vegetarian Chimichanga which had dry clumpy rice and revolting highly spiced refried beans which quite frankly looked like faeces on the plate! At no point during the main meal were we asked if our meals were ok or whether we were happy. As three of the four of us were unsatisfied with our meals I explained this to one of waitresses who looked at my plate and said I should have mentioned it at the beginning of the meal as it was all gone! But two plates were half full and one hardly touched. The sheer dumb cheek of her! She said she would speak to her manager. The manager came across very defensive and clearly didn't want to satisfy her customers with a happy experience and offered us a free round of drinks! My sister was insisted that a discount be applied after the manager said lamb is meant to be pink. My sister replied well no its not you can have it well done obviously according to ones taste. The manager walked away in a huff saying she'd speak to the Chef. She came back offering to take off the jug of mockingly we ordered and 10% of the order. We agreed though on hindsight I think more should have been offered. Lastly, to put the icing on the cake the manager abruptly left the bill on the table without saying a word and luckily I checked it as it had an item overpriced and also no 10% discount had been applied. The managers interaction with us made us feel like nuisance and unwelcome. She was not professional or understanding nor apologised for the experience we had and spoiled our evening. Food and service dismal. We strongly do not recommend...

I have been here a few times during the past decade or so and had previously had fairly positive experiences of it. It would appear that things have gone downhill since then however, as a friend recently booked it for her birthday and our experience there was considerably less positive.

I definitely dodged a bullet with some of the beleaguered and suspect-looking things that ended up getting pushed around the plates of my friends and family members before being ultimately discarded. Upon first impression, my 'Vegetarian Fajitas' were, by comparison, the envy of the table. Upon closer examination however, it became apparent that the (undeniably generous) pile of vegetables in the little cast-iron 'sizzler' bore very little resemblance to anything that one might normally expect to find associated with a 'Fajita' (or anything else on a 'Mexican' menu) and would in fact have been much better deployed as part of a Sunday Roast. Literally; whole Brussels Sprouts, bulbous florets of Broccoli and Cauliflower, big chunky carrots and actual wedges of Red Cabbage (with a couple of peppers thrown in for good measure). There had apparently been no attempt whatsoever to make this surprising selection of vegetables taste 'Mexican'. The vegetables were accompanied by a very small stack of impossibly small 'Flour Tortillas', each of which were, notably too small to deal with any of the vegetable chunks provided, let alone a smear of tinned 'Refried Beans' or the accompanying, and scandalously bland, 'Guacamole'.

Incredibly the bill came to something approaching Two Hundred And Fifty Pounds, of which something approaching an equally incredible Twenty Five Pounds was constituted by a rather presumptuous 'Optional Service Charge' (bearing in mind at this point that we were four paying adults accompanied by four teen-agers). All-told; a somewhat surreal experience. Apparently "Money Is Short", "Times Are Hard" and suchforth, but irrespective of this no establishment should be attempting to exchange currency for food unless they are prepared to do so upon more reasonable terms than this. I will suffice it to say, not be...

A dinner date to forget. My wife and I had been meaning to come to Casa Mexicana for a while and did so this evening. The menu looked good and food was satisfactory, mainly due to the negative feeling generated by poor service.

To start with everything seemed to be going as per usual, 'waiter asks about drinks', and delivers drinks, but then, the next stage in the process is where things went awry. The next step where 'Waiter takes food order' happened but unfortunately only half the order (my wife's dinner) was delivered and without cutlery. We had assumed that the lack of cutlery meant my meal was on its way and would subsequently all come together. When nothing came out 10 mins later, we asked where my dish was and for some cutlery, we were told it had been missed by the kitchen. My wife continued to eat her now cold dinner on her own whilst we waited. At this stage we asked what could be done to appease us as we came out to dinner together, but ended eating alone. We were told by the manager that due to new staff, it was their balls up and therefore, she would comp 50% of the bill. Happy with this even though the dinner date was ruined, we accepted. I continued to wait for my dinner, which when it arrived was very nice. We saw the manager leave for the evening and hoped her word would be kept. When the bill came, not only did we wait 15 mins before a card machine came out only 50% had been taken off my dish. I questioned this with the staff and they called the manager who said she meant the meal only. Not my wife's cold dinner too.

Really poor from management here, as she left so called inexperienced staff in charge to deal with an issue and left a customer disappointed and dissatisfied. We will not be back, but not because of the food, but because of a bad experience where...