Caliente Mexican Craving | Catering & Food Truck — Restaurant in Baton Rouge

Wow. I have never had a worse experience at a restaurant in my entire life. I've worked in restaurants for years, and if either a manager or a server would have ever acted like this towards a customer, they would have been fired on the spot.

We came in as a party of 4 and was sat relatively quickly even though it was National Margarita Day. The restaurant was empty as far as seating goes. The bar was overrun with people taking their margaritas to go.

Our waitress introduced herself and started off on the right foot taking our drink orders, sharing the specials (2-for-1 margaritas), and took an app order of queso.

We received our drinks pretty quickly, as well as the queso. After the queso was delivered, the waitress started over with writing our ticket by taking our first names to easily decipher who ordered what when it came time for checks since we were paying separately. We thought this was odd, but we went with it.

20 minutes goes by, a table of college aged guys sat behind us and were pretty rowdy. Our waitress came by twice to ask if we were okay. By this time, we had finished our queso and requested our second round. Another 15 minutes goes by, we still have yet to receive our second round and the rowdy table behind us is served their food.

I approach the manager and ask her to check on the status of our table's food and second order of drinks. She in turn goes to the waitress and tells her to take care of our table. Our waitress comes back and brings us our second round in TO-GO cups... We realize there is an issue here. She did not even realize we had not gotten our food. Of course, she throws blame at the kitchen, and runs back to the waiter station to frantically search for our ticket.

She comes back and tells us the kitchen lost our ticket and didn't push out our food. We've been at this restaurant for over an hour now and have only gotten chips, queso, and salsa to eat. We still wanted our food, and she offered an appetizer comped to tide us over. I ask for another order of queso since not one of us can even think to order something else when all we want is the food we originally ordered.

The to-go drinks were somewhat watered down (my friend ordered a frozen top shelf which was no longer frozen), so I took my friend's drink back to the bar and asked if they could fix the issue since his first drink was frozen. Several hostesses, waiters/waitresses, AND the manager all told me that the top shelf was more liquified because it had more alcohol in it. My family owned a Daiquiri shop at one time, so I'm aware what needs to be done in order to make frozen drinks frozen. They could have told me that they were running the machine like crazy and it may have not had an opportunity to freeze just yet, which is an honest answer I would have taken. Then they should have offered to change it in a few minutes once the machine had a chance to freeze the mix., but no. The manager ended up dumping the drink and refilled it with not top shelf frozen.

While at the bar, I noticed three drinks that looks EXACTLY like the drinks we ordered the first time, and servers had come and gone and not bat an eye at those drinks. I told my friend and we went back to the bar to ask for them since they were most likely ours. The server who was standing there was making sure we weren't just drunk patrons trying to work one over on the restaurant called our server over to make sure they were our drinks. The server was completely thrown off and ended up letting us take the drinks.

After this, our food was brought to us and it was all done right after an hour and a half of aggravation. We were apologized to a couple of times by the waitress, but that was not enough to make up for this complete and utter disgust of an experience.

Honestly, I don't know what would make me want to go back even though I live right next door...

I experienced horrendous customer service at Caliente tonight. I was excited to experience a semblance of normalcy during this pandemic. Accompanied by two friends and our kids, we came to Caliente to enjoy the food and each other’s company. Despite being at low capacity at the time we arrived, the service was very slow—which we did not get agitated by—considering the restaurant stated they were under staffed due to COVID. The food was subpar, but we brushed it off. We assumed Caliente was short staffed in the kitchen and couldn’t get the food out fast enough. After eating and getting our checks, we get our cards out to pay. The table busser —who my friends and I had no interaction with prior to her coming to clean our table—comes over and picks up our cards. When asked if she’d be taking them to “cash us out,” she nodded her head in a ‘yes’ motion and walked away. 20 minutes passes and we still haven’t received our cards back. We called the waitress over to inquire about our cards, and she stated she would go check on it. 5 more minutes pass and the waitress comes over with the two cards of my friend’s, but not mine. She proceeds to say that my card had been lost and that there was nothing they could do. She stated she could take my name and number down and I would be called if the card was found. I stated that this was absolutely unacceptable; that my card shouldn’t have been picked up and taken anywhere except for the register to pay for my food and directly back to me. When asked to speak to the manager, she stated she would get him to come over and talk to me. 5 more minutes go by and I haven’t spoken to the manager or my waitress. After waiving her over, she stated she would go check again for the card. 15 minutes later, the waitress comes to me to ask if I was “insert name here” and that, if so, my card had been found. When giving my card back, I wasn’t asked for ID to prove I was who I said I was. Alarmed and unsatisfied with how the entire situation was handled, I repeated that I wanted to speak to the manager. When the manager, Cheston, came over, I explained the situation to him and how I was displeased with the level of care taken with my personal information and stated that I would like to be refunded for my meal to remedy the misplacement of my card, the horrible customer service, and the excessive time spent to get the situation resolved. Cheston showed no sympathy (he did not apologize for my experience and was in fact, sarcastic) stating that my card “was not lost because I have it in my hands” and that he would not refund my meal because “there was nothing wrong with the food.” He tried to compare the mishandling to customers coming in, having too many drinks, and leaving their cards at the restaurant. I emphasized that this was in no way comparable to my situation because my card was misplaced at no fault of my own, that it was out of my possession for over 30 minutes and “no where to be found,” and the possibility that anyone could have obtained my information. Cheston refused to refund my card although the restaurant caused a huge inconvenience to me. I feel the staff members I spoke with did not value my business and implemented horrible customer service. Caliente prides themself on “creating a welcoming and easy going atmosphere” that “keeps customers coming back” (their words, not mine). Needless to say, I will NEVER step foot in this place again because the manager nor waitress showed one ounce of care for the inconvenience they caused me, especially considering there was no apology given and I spent over 45 minutes trying to get a resolution to a situation that was at no...

We received superb customer service tonight!

This is our family restaurant. I realize it's more for the college student crowd, but we like to go there to eat as a family (our 2-year old daughter loves to get chips and queso). When we started going there, after it first opened, they would get our food order wrong all the time. More recently though, they've been very good about getting our order correct. We like to go because we like the food, and the service is good.

The last time we went, a couple weeks ago, we had terrible service. The waiter obviously didn't care or want to serve us. He hardly ever stopped by, and when he did he would literally ask how we were as he kept walking past us. He was more concerned with his girlfriend at the bar. He even brought us our bill WHILE we were still eating. We didn't even ask for it. It was probably one of the worst service experiences I've ever had. Well, we filled out a comment card, and I even left a note for him on the receipt. We let him and management know that his service was terrible and that we usually tip at least 20%, but the service was so awful, we couldn't even tip 10% that night.

Tonight we went back and had a different server. The service was much better this time. When we were finished, we asked for the check. At that point, our server told us we were receiving a complementary dessert. We were confused as to why. He let us know that the management knew we had a bad experience last time, so tonight dessert was on the house. The management RECOGNIZED us and REMEMBERED our service from a couple weeks ago. Amazing! That is what true customer service is all about. Needless to say, we will be returning...