La Costa Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in American Fork

Update 2 I has now been just under a month since we ate here, and since we have tried to reach out to the GM, Assit Manager, owner literally anyone to get a refund on our horrible rotten tasting food, and they did comment below as you can see, however it has been 2 weeks since I first emailed them and they have not responded with ANYTHING not even a lousy coupon. This is a poorly ran establishment and I would save your money!! They are just trying to get every single penny out of you. It should not take a month for someone to at least reach out and say something! This feels like theft because we didn’t even eat the food. I just want our refund back!

UPDATE: 2 days Later, have called into the restaurant everyday since we ate there almost a week ago, and STILL NOTHING! This is so poorly ran they obviously scamming people with how much they nickel and dime people. And they keeping our $50 under lock and key!! This is ridiculous! We have called numerous times to get ahold of a manager to issue a refund. We have been thrown around and no one has called us back. When we got home we called into the restaurant only to be ran around to find someone who spoke good English. Which is fine! However the lady who we spoke to was getting upset with us and demanded we bring back the food to show them that we didn’t eat it. I explained that we only took the chimi and chicken nuggets, the shredded beef burrito was STILL on the plate when we left. She said to bring back the food, I said I’m not digging it out of the trash. My husband had decided to just throw it away and waste the money instead of trying to eat it to save what we spent on the meal. All in all bad customer service and service at all. You don’t ask some one to bring food back. The food we ordered was awful and I wasn’t even able to finish my food because the shredded beef burrito was soooo bad! The chimi was burnt and so were my son’s chicken nuggets that he didn’t even finish either. The place smelled like a bathroom right when you walked in. The fish tank we were sat by smelled too. ALL we want is a refund...

3 stars based on 2 for my experience with the food, and 4 for the service and atmosphere. I will probably never eat here again when there are better Mexican restaurants to choose from. My particular order (chili relleno and carne asade chimichanga) was disappointing.

The chili relleno: maybe their version of it is some regional preference, but I've never seen one like it. The chili was very small, still had some crunch, and wasn't fried in the usual batter. It was wrapped in what looked and tasted like pure, dense egg (possibly powdered egg); like an omelet. The taste was bland, and texture was wet and slick. Not very appetizing. I fry up a better one at home and I'm as fair as the driven snow.

The carne asada chimichanga: the highlight was the tortilla. The meat was somehow soggy and tough at the same time with a lot of sinew. It also had an unsettling flavor. Again, maybe this is a regional preference, or family recipe. It's just not my preference.

The food came out fast. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. In this case, I'm calling it bad. It came out suspiciously fast, and had a look and taste that, along with how quickly it appeared, suggest pre-made. I looked around our table and what I saw of the other dishes all looked about the same; like pre-made food elements were all just kind of arranged together when the order hit the kitchen. Granted, the chicken fajitas a couple chairs down did arrive on a sizzling cast iron pan, but that's been pretty much mandatory for awhile and has all but lost its charm. The ~2 ounces of synthetic looking chicken more than negated the novelty of the pan sizzle.

I do have it on good authority though that the nachos "are amazing." This comes from a man who orders nothing but nachos at every Mexican restaurant he frequents.

The atmosphere and service were enjoyable, and friendly and helpful. The serving staff all seemed attentive and...

The food is really good, and they were very busy on a Saturday night, AND we had a big group, so I can't fault them too much for the following, it did seem like an off night. So take this with a grain of salt. We had a bug group of about 14 or 16 (I can't remember the exact number, it was a friend's birthday) come in on a Saturday, and we let them know we were coming the day before and day of. However, they told us they don't take reservations on weekends. Places that get busy often do that, that's fine. But when I got there at 5:15 and gave them our name, they told me in the same breath "we don't take reservations on weekends, and they only reservations we have tonight are for 6:00 and 6:30". So that was super confusing. Maybe those guys rented out a whole room? So they had us sit outside on the deck (it was pretty cold out) and they had heaters so that was fine. But when we went out, it was SO hot and we had lots of big dudes so we asked them to turn it down. So they turned it off and all that was fine until it got really cold and we had to ask them no less than 7 times to turn it back on. There were two babies with us that we had to wrap up in blankets and coats until we got it turned back on. Other than that, it was normal service for a big group, just felt like they forgot about us sometimes. Again I don't expect it to be perfect on an already busy night, having to accommodate a huge group. And there was only one member of the staff that was a little snippy, the rest were all very friendly, so maybe she was having a stressful night and I don't blame her! But I am confused about the "we don't take reservations on weekends but we have two tonight" thing. But the food is good and I'll still recommend it. Just make sure you call and talk to them first if you have a big...