Mistora — Restaurant in Atlanta

As you can see from my profile, I do not leave reviews on Google. However, last night's experience was so laughably bizarre I would be remiss to not inform other potential patrons.

I dined at Mistora with a small group and upon arriving, we were sat in the back event space. Other than our group, there were no other patrons in the restaurant at 7pm on a Tuesday evening. The back room we were dining in did not have any air circulation and the air vents were visibly closed. We asked if the air could be turned down and the staff said yes. But instead of turning the air down, they simply brought in a giant orange industrial fan. Not only did the air remain warm and humid but now we had to talk over a loud industrial fan.

We ordered a round of drinks immediately which did not arrive for at least 30 minutes (keep in mind we were the only patrons in this restaurant at this time). We ordered our food next, which took another 45 minutes to arrive. My dish was the jerk chicken, priced at $27. What arrived (pictured in this review) was a large mountain of rice and beans and a tiny serving of pre-sliced chicken. The rice was flavored well but chicken was over cooked, dry, and hard to cut due to the skin being rubber. The jerk chicken is advertised as including a mango medley and fried plantains. As you can see from my photo, the dish did not come with these items. A friend at the table ordered the lobster mac and cheese, priced at $40. This dish was nearly inedible due to the macaroni being over salted and the lobster having no flavor at all.

When some of the group went to use the restroom, they returned to inform us that there was no toilet paper in the establishment. The staff offered us cocktail napkins to use instead. Keep in mind, there is a publix just down the road where toilet paper can be purchased! But no, cocktails napkins are apparently good enough. I don't want to know what this is doing to the septic system.

The restaurant is also oddly dark. This is not due to a lack of lighting fixtures since there are lovely sconces and basket-style chandeliers throughout, however none of those fixtures were powered on. The only light came from a few canned lights in the ceiling, making reading the menu very difficult.

All things considered, our server was kind and helpful so these complaints do not reflect on her. It's obvious this is a failure at the management level.

Mistora, how on earth do you run out of toilet paper in a restaurant with no other patrons? And not just that, why did no one immediately go to publix to purchase more? It tells me that whoever is overseeing the operations is either incompetent or simply doesn't care. It also begs the question of what else is sub-par or in violation of health code standards that we simply did not see or notice.

I will never dine at Mistora again and I cannot recommend anyone else dine...

This restaurant could be a candidate for Kitchen Nightmares. We spent 2.5 hours for a dinner that could have been half that.

Similar to a lot of people here, I had a reservation for 2 on Valentines Day. On arrival to the restaurant, you are essentially forced to pay $20 for parking for someone to drive your car 20 feet into a dirt lot behind the restaurant. There is nowhere else nearby to park and the service itself already felt unprofessional as I sent zelle to someone's personal account who was the 'parking attendant'. Anyways, I did not give that much more thought since I was excited to celebrate.

Getting into the restaurant and seated was fine. There were maybe 3 or 4 other tables seated and a few people at the bar, so it felt somewhat empty at the time. We got water almost immediately but asked for a few minutes more on the menu. Little did we know those few minutes turned into an hour without so much as a refill of water. By the time we were able to order, another table next to us had already got up and left due to the poor service. Like others, the server noted how she was the only one waiting tables yet there were many other service staff seemingly not helping or not being coordinated as a team to do so.

We ordered a few tapas and a bottle of white wine. After another 15 minutes the server comes back and tells me they are out of the bottle. I ask for a different bottle of white wine and then they come back with a bottle of champagne instead not knowing that it was not at all what I ordered. I explain its not wine and they go and come back again then telling me they are out of the all the white wine except 1 bottle which was the most overpriced bottle on the menu. Instead, we just ordered some cocktails which came out fast and were good. The tapas eventually came out another 30 min later which were also good, but some were did not seem fresh anymore like they were sitting around the kitchen.

To top off the whole experience, we asked for the check which ended up being another 30-minute ordeal to try and leave. Once we finally get the check the server 'graciously' tells us she took off the bottle of wine (that we never got) and a dish (that we also never got) even though we had already asked to cancel the dish after waiting over an hour and asked multiple times for. Unfortunately, I was also forced to pay a 20% 'service fee' for one of the most lackluster restaurant experiences I have had. There was nothing about the service we received to justify the charge.

I will never come back or recommend this restaurant even though the tapas and drinks (that we received) were pretty good. The terrible service and overall experience will always remind me to be weary of a restaurant with no reviews. To anyone else looking for a place for dinner, hopefully the multiple bad reviews help you steer clear...

A Catastrophic Experience, Avoid at All Costs

This was, without exaggeration, the strangest and worst restaurant experience of my life. From start to finish, everything was a disaster. So bad it was comical at the end.

First, the listed address directs rideshares to a fenced-in parking lot with no exit, forcing guests to either walk half a mile or climb a fence—something the staff admitted “happens all the time” but offered no solutions or seemed to care about. Once seated, we were completely ignored. It took 40 minutes just to get WATER and another 30 minutes for two mediocre cocktails. Our server never communicated what was going on, or even acknowledged we were sitting there, leaving the whole section of guests in limbo, looking around at one another in solidarity to the horrible environment we were all in.

We finally got a server and put in just a few orders of tapas. When food finally arrived (about 2 hours after being seated), it was cold, burnt, and inedible. With so much time in between drinks/food/communication, staff tried to placate guests with free shots of alcohol instead of real solutions—an unsettling tactic when most of us were on empty stomachs. The next round of food was equally disastrous: burnt, cold Wagyu meatballs that were worse than what you'd find at a furniture store. I could not eat them.

Then came the insult of Sutter Home wine—a cheap, $7.99 bottom shelf gas-station bottle—was brought out instead of the premium bottle we ordered, with no acknowledgment of the bait-and-switch.

To top it all off, throughout the night when they ran out of a dish, instead of informing us and letting us choose what to eat, they would avoid us and then a hour or so later would randomly substitute something else without asking. If you run out, TELL YOUR GUESTS. Simple. I wasnt even able to eat some of the blind-substitute choices they made on behalf of us out of allergy concerns.

When the bill arrived, they had the audacity to automatically add gratuity, despite the wild abysmal service. I had to negotiate charges and ask for dished of food to be removed that we never received.

This restaurant operates with ZERO communication amongst wait staff themselves OR the customers, no accountability, and complete disregard for its guests. Avoid at all costs unless you enjoy waiting hours for less-than cafeteria food. Waitstaff hanging out while we were all starving and smoking a hookah around guests trying to eat, also a...