Santiago's Bodega — Restaurant in Altamonte Springs

(Last visited 1/23/2022.) It's our day to fly home, but before we hop on a plane we must enjoy one more Orlando brunch because they seem to know how to do it down here! So as a part of our Yelp due-diligence we created this list of bottomless brunch places and this was one of them! Now I'll tell you why this place tops the list!

Atmosphere/Appearance: Set right in the corner of a lil' shopping mall-like plaza is this gem. Those unique cylindrical shingles will let you know you're in the right place. There is a private parking lot so there's plenty of space to leave your fly ride while you brunch. It's Florida so of course there is plenty of outdoor seating, but the inside is beautiful. Like, everything is beautiful. The wooden floors are multi-colored. There are bamboo walls that create area separators and the restaurant is one big circle. It's designed so well. It wasn't very loud in here, but you could certainly feel the energy. We sat at a high-top in the bar area to be as close to the bottomless mimosas as possible!

Service: I can't remember who took care of us, but he was so smooth, so chill and I loved his energy. I feel like his name started with a "C", Carlos maybe, but he was awesome. He definitely added to the amazing experience we had here.

Food: So like my last review, this place also offer bottomless mimosas WITH bottomless tapas?! HOW CAN YOU FREAKING GO WRONG?! So the mimosas were SUPER strong and served in wine glasses. There were numerous flavors that you can try that differ far away from the traditional mimosa. For food I started with the Sweet Broccolini & Baby Kale which consists of red onions, dried cranberries, sliced almonds and citrus poppyseed dressing. It was clean, crisp, flavorful and a great healthy way to start off the brunch. Next up was the Tomato Soup which is made with San Marzano tomatoes, onion and cream. It was a simple dish full of rich, creamy and hearty complex flavors. Next up were the Peel 'N' Eat Shrimp. These were so good. They were seasoned with a dry rub and it was SO FLAVORFUL. For those of you that don't know, you're supposed to suck the flavoring off of the shells, peel the shrimp then eat it! So that's how you keep the flavor that's on the outside of the shell involved after you peel it all away. I actually had 2 orders of these. Now when I saw Prime Rib on the menu I got so excited and for good reason! It was cooked to an excellent medium-rare temperature, topped with a warm, salty gravy and was just a great way to absorb the mimosas that kept coming non-stop. Lol. But, by far, my favorite tapa of the afternoon was the Croissant French Toast which is served with an apricot pecan cream cheese. This was AMAZING. It took me back to the days when my dad would take me to the fairs and amusement parks then we'd get some fried dough. The croissant tasted EXACTLY like that. It hit the nostalgia button for me and was just incredible. You need to try this if you're here for brunch.

Value: For unlimited alcoholic beverages and unlimited food it'll cost you $47.95. That is amazing. I'd pay more! Lol. Don't tell the restaurant that though! It's absolutely worth it.

In conclusion, I loved this place. I love Orlando and yeah. That's it. Lol. I look forward to revisiting this place in the future and redoing this experience all over again!

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Amazing brunch with it's caveats. Today 05/08/21 we went to celebrate Mother's day early at the Altamonte location. We were a table of 5 in total. Our food was great. The must try highlights were the Frittata and prime rib (angus beef certified). Our favorite the french toast fell a bit short of expectations as it was a bit too greasy and over-fried. However, our waiter did later bring us another serving which was a bit better yet still excessively oily. Our waiter Felipe was amazing. He was attentive, kind, and very cordial. Our experience would have been a 5 star experience if a particular rude staff member didn't sour the end of our brunch. Upon receiving our check back, and signing to leave the tip.. Someone came up to us letting us know we had to leave because another table arrived "the next reservation". It honestly was her tone and the way she approached the table which left a negative impact. Perhaps, it would have been better for her to speak to our waiter and realize that we had already paid and were leaving the tip in order to get up and leave. Each of us paid $44.95 in order to eat brunch. Keep in mind since COVID they have changed their policies to prevent cross-contamination, and now servers bring food to your table. This change in the buffet does add additional time. A table may take slightly longer than 2 hours because they have to wait on servers to ask what they want and bring it to the table time after time. Our table was still under the 3 hour mark when she came to ask us to relocate to the bar and finish our drinks or leave. (Also, we were not planning on finishing any drinks... when she came we were already leaving). Some of that additional time our table took was also from asking for the check, then waiting for someone to pick up the card, and then waiting for it to be brought back. Keep in mind servers are busy with several tables and the restaurant should be more aware of potential time delays between tables. I personally won't go back anytime soon. Maybe I will wait for the policies to change , and when customers can go back to self-service this way I won't feel any anxiety of how long it takes for my table to get there and leave (Since you are on a clock here - Tik toc tik toc) . There is no notice of a 2 hour limit anywhere at the restaurant or menu, but I did find out about this "recommendation" on their website. It's very difficult to realize this expectation with big tables as well as with first time visitors , and as I had mentioned waiting for the food to arrive, then your server to be back and you can order more. Who knows maybe we can try the Orlando location. One last note there were still open tables inside when this happened and we were an...

First let me start by stating I am not some random customer complaining. I am a foodie and well travelled with restaurants so I know the difference of how a person should be treated versus not. No matter what the general manager decides to respond or lie about. We have been going to Santiago’s for a while now for Brunch. We specifically like going to to this location because whether we have a reservations or not it is usually not as busy as the downtown location. We arrived at 11:45am and where told there was only 1 table available outside. Okay. We saw at least half of the available tables inside so I ask why that’s the case? The General Manager went into immediate defense mode and said they where not available because they all had reservations coming in at 12:30pm. 45 min from the time we walked in. It was not like we walked in 15min before reservations but okay. I’ll be reasonable and go with that. We then proceed to go outside and where seated on a high top. We are not fans of high top so we moved to a low top table. The server in that area was very kind and told us it was reserved and also informed us that the entire area was a smoking area. Even though there was not anyone smoking at the time this was not the responsibility of the server to inform us it was the managers job. Keep in mind we had a minor with us as well. When we confronted the manager about that he simply stated that since there was no one smoking at the time it shouldn’t be a big deal as if he can predict the future and someone wouldn’t show up and start smoking. In the end the manager preferred us walking away after driving 40 min to be there instead of trying to accommodate or simply do a better job of explaining the situation. Which I’m sure after this public review he will. Usually, when we experience a situation like this we put the restaurants on a 6 month time out which my hope would be that the restaurant is under new management at the time. It’s very sad because we are also EXTREMELY generous tippers and all this General Manager did is take away from a servers income for a reservation that was not coming until 45min AFTER we got there. I could have even understood if the next reservation was 30min but not 45min. We have ran into situations like this in the past with other establishments and they handled themselves professionally and simply informed us to please not go over long so they can accommodate the reservation OR simply do a better job of explaining the situation and dynamics of what may be going on. We received neither. Very...