Ay Caramba Mexican Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Asheville

Wildly inconsistent but excellent food much of the time.

I am giving this restaurant a rating of 4, because sometimes it’s excellent and is a 5+, and sometimes it hovers between a 2 and 3. We have been ordering takeout dishes here since they opened, and we really like the staff, and, for the most part, we really enjoy the food. We live quite close, so we order with some frequency when we don’t feel like cooking.

But the food is inconsistent! I always order the same two things. And I have likely ordered these two dishes 20 times each, and I receive very different dishes each time. The two things I order are the Camarones a la Diabla and Ceviche Mixto I’ll start with the Camarones a la Diabla. Sometimes it’s wonderful and has a creamy sauce, sometimes it’s just the shrimp and very little sauce at all. Sometimes the shrimp are plump, and sometimes they are really overcooked and dry. And sometimes the sauce doesn’t taste creamy and just seems like it’s more spicy. We even say “can we have sauce on it, but not too much.” Because sometimes there is way too much sauce and it’s really swimming in cream and feels like it’s too heavy. When they get it right, it’s a perfect blend of spice and some sauce and juicy shrimp. When they get it wrong, it’s either just shrimp with no real seasoning or shrimp, swimming in cream. Always the offering of shrimp is generous. There are quite a few and the size of them is good.

Let’s move on to the ceviche. You can see the different photos of the ceviches. It’s not just the way they have decorated it with the avocado; it’s the amount of fish to onion/tomatoes ratio. Sometimes it’s really great with the fish being very forward and the onion and tomatoes just being a bit of a back up, like most ceviche. But, over the past several months, it is so full of onion, that I can barely eat it. We have even tried to say “no onions”, but they don’t do that. Or they don’t think it would be a ceviche without any onions. The onions just completely overwhelm the rest of the dish. It would be interesting for us to track it to see which nights we order to see if it’s a particular chef, because when they do the ceviche well, it’s really very very good, and it’s a large portion.

Also, when they cook the shrimp diabla dish nicely, it’s really great shrimp, juicy, with fresh toppings, and the perfect amount of sauce. When it’s not cooked well, it is shrimp that are overcooked, and hardly any sauce at all. We just don’t know which dishes we are going to get!

All that said, the people are really nice, and friendly, and when we stay and grab a margarita, the drinks are good. We will often grab a margarita and sit at the bar while we wait for food, if we are driving by and just decided that night that this is what we want. And the bartenders are so so sweet. Really really nice people. Again, and the servers are great too. I just wish the food was...

Walked in around 1 o’clock, they were not very busy. Greeted and seated promptly. The booth I was seated at had big tear down the center of the vinyl seat fabric on one side. This left me staring at a thankfully silent big screen TV that was on an ESPN channel. Other than that, the decor was the usual meh Tex Mex standard. Promptly got delivered some reasonably decent tortilla chips and actually good bean dip. The food was all downhill from there. Ordered the Popeye Pollo from the lunch menu. Chicken breast with spinach and mushrooms, rice and salad on the side. $9.50 so not too bad. it took over 20 minutes to get to the table. Compare that to Papas and beer where it’s usually around 3 to 5 minutes. The chicken was way overcooked, and it was difficult to tell if it was flavorful or not because it and the spinach and mushrooms was practically drowned in salt. It was truly all but inedible. The rice and the salad were completely meh. I took it down anyway because I needed to eat and didn’t have time to go somewhere else. Then I went to pay the bill, and it was $15. I asked how that was, and pointed out the lunch menu and the price. The lady at the hostess/cashier stand said the server charged me for a dinner portion, and I said oh no, we never talked about that, I pointed out this exact item on this exact lunch menu., so she went to find the server, and came back with a revised bill. No appearance made by the server herself and no apology for the mixup (assuming it was one.) I paid the bill and left. It didn’t figure it worth the time to say much more about. Will not return, do...

ay ay ay Caramba is all I have to say I was really excited to try a new Mexican place here in Asheville, but I was disappointed yet again If you followed my other reviews I reviewed taco boy and found that quite disappointing as we sat down, it found that the service was terrible and that they did not care anything about us. They thought of us as pest on the floor that they had to get rid of the food was cold, and I didn’t really find it any good I wouldn’t waste my time coming here thank you very much when we arrived, we sat down for 20 minutes and continue to watch as the service hung out in the back and didn’t even acknowledge our presence at the table. We decided to come and serve us to which they were very cold and distant and just seems like they didn’t want to be there. I myself have worked in the service industry and know that is no way to treat your customers so yes, we got our food and it was cold and not good and at the very end our server realized that tips are important way of life so she tried to be nicer to us, but I wasn’t having it because I’d sat there for 20 minutes watching them just stared at us in the back, not returning to this junkyard and dumpster fire. They call...