Villa Maya Restaurant — Restaurant in Aspen Hill

I have come to this restaurant enough times now to adequately review (Clarksburg location). First, the food is good and the portions very generous! I typically order HH tacos or queso, chicken burrito bowl, or chicken fajitas and all have been consistently prepared for dine in (at the bar) or take out. Second, I agree with the reviews about the service with two exceptions, Danny is the best/attentive/responsive/customer service oriented and Emma is newer but also fantastic too. This restaurant is conveniently located when I WFH. I am one person and usually sit at the bar to allow other larger parties opportunities for tables at the bar, in the dining area, or outside.

Here are the reasons for my three star rating:

1. What is extremely irritating to me about this particular restaurant's bar is the exorbitant amount of inappropriate behavior from some of the males that frequent this place, on top of the service from some of the bartenders and servers (see point #2).

2. A couple of the male bartenders/servers often behave as though serving me is a chore or I am doing them a favor by waiting 10 minutes to even be acknowledged. Two in particular are not too friendly towards me after I turned down advances (as a patron) from them months ago. Why is this a problem for me as a female patron?!

3. Restaurant management does not settle down or stop the inappropriate behavior of the males in the bar (mentioned in point 1). I say this because other restaurant bars I frequent (i.e., in the DMV) put a stop to this behavior towards me, and quickly.

4. Just because an attractive female sits at a bar alone it does not mean she is looking to be hit on, catcalled, and even debated when she turns down a man's advances and/or calls out an inappropriate male patron to make the behavior stop!

As just one example, and I have many at this point, I stopped in last night after a long WFH day for take out and tried to enjoy a margarita while I waited for my food. But, as is the norm at this place, the two "regulars" (male) there were already well into their libations and one was behaving wildly inappropriate and aggressive towards me. This male has done this on three separate occasions and this is AFTER I called him out on his behavior months ago. He does have a really nice friend who typically is with him and tries to run interference for me - it rarely helps. Adding to this particular experience, the bartender serving me was not even pleasant when taking my order and completely ignored me when I wanted to add another item to my to go order. I don't usually write negative reviews but this time I had too. I have taken extended breaks from visiting this place in spite of the convenient proximity because more often than not, I encounter the above scenario and refuse to change my position, nor should I have to, on being one person taking up a table that could serve multiple patrons. After last night's experience, I'll take my business elsewhere.

Finally, single ladies/ladies dining alone at the bar beware! Consider opting not to sit at the bar in this establishment unless it is early in the day or you are prepared for inappropriate (and many are married) "frequent regular" male patrons during HH and evening/late...

This was our second time eating at Villa Maya and our last. We went about 6 months ago and had terrible service, but we figured we'd give it another try since the food was pretty good. Well, we will not be going back again after our experience yesterday. The waiter treated us like we were the IRS and completely stayed away from us. He (Gabriel) basically took our drink order and food order. Other servers dropped off our food and our server brought us the check. Never asked us if we needed anything else (which I would have ordered another beer increasing the bill total) never asked about dessert, if our food was okay (and it was just okay beans and rice were cold), never offered kids milks for our kids (which is included in the price for the kids meal) we had to waive him down to bring the included sundae and for a box. I waited tables all through high school and college, so I typically tip 20-25% and if bad I tip 10-15% because I know what it's like. But when I was a server, I gave the customers an experience and wanted them to enjoy themselves and feel taken care of. I haven't wanted to stiff somebody so bad, but it was the holidays so I still left 15% though I feel like I just reinforced bad service.

For a mom and pop place I would feel like they would have friendly staff so they could try to set themselves apart from the big chains. However, if you've ever worked for a big chain they have the service science down to how long a diner should wait to be greeted, when they should get drinks, apps and meal and how many times you should check on them. I typically like to support the mom and pop places over the chains, but they could absolutely learn something in the hospitality area. They may rely solely on the food to bring people back, but not in our case. We gave it a second try as I don't feel one bad server should make you turn away from a place, but two out of two is different. Lastly I'd like the readers to know that it wasn't even busy. I can understand when people are double and triple seated at once, but we were one of the only tables there. Or, if he was having a bad day or something happened, I would just let my tables know. It doesn't excuse terrible service, but puts things into prospective and people are generally...

My comments today are chiefly regarding the service that we received this evening for a take-out order. When calling over the phone, we ordered four children’s entrées, three full size adult entrées, a soup, and a queso dip. While we were ordering, we begged and pleaded for them to give us more than one their customary takeout one small bag of chips, because we had presented an over-$100 order and were feeding a large family. When we got to the restaurant to pick up our order, we had to argue for about 10 minutes, after which the host eventually gave us a total of three small bags of chips and some salsa. When we got home, and unloaded our bags, we found that the queso dip was not there. We called to get it resolved, as we live nearby and order from this restaurant frequently and could have come to pick it up. When we called, the host and manager Sue was extremely argumentative, pitting us against her kitchen staff who had stated they had put the cheese in there. We searched our car thoroughly, search the bags, could not find it, and she very clearly did not believe us, and refused to offer any assistance or a replacement. Ultimately, after continuous discussion, we were at least able to resolve the situation by having her remove the cost of the dip. What was much more unfortunate than missing a small appetizer was her insistence that we were lying and the unpleasant experience that I feel that both we and she had. She could have believed the customer and offered help and both of us could have been happy; instead it was a fight and cruelty and lack of trust. All unnecessary. I hope that their front-facing staff can learn to trust customers in the future - we care about their establishment succeeding, are proud to have Villa Maya be nearby, and want to continue to come, and don’t want to have such experiences to judge them by.

Note: edited to reflect high quality of food we received - i increased to four stars food and 3...