El Peñol — Restaurant in Boston

WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER!! I had come here with a party of 5 for my mother in law’s birthday. We waited for an hour to get seated, which was fine because they stated they didn’t take any reservations.

When we finally got to seated, they took our order quickly. Then, our waitress never came back to check in on us. She was doing hostess duties - seating people/cleaning up tables. She walked by us several times. I’m not sure if we just had bad luck because she was the one who took our order & not the other more experienced waiters who were constantly serving the tables around us. She may have just been the hostess who was helping out or something due to being short staffed.

We did not get any water/appetizers/drinks in until we asked around 45 minutes after being seated. Even then, it took about 10-15 minutes for us to get water. We were told we haven’t gotten drinks/appetizers because their machine was down. My father in law had to ask if he could get his beer since no machine is needed for that. They didn’t even give us water which doesn’t require any machine.

We are watching people who are sat at the same time as us or after us get all their food and leave. We were never given updates about our food and they failed to mention they were out of the Mondongo soup until we had asked what is going on with our food orders around the 1 hour mark of being seated.

Under normal circumstances we would have already left, but it was my mother in laws birthday and we wanted to make sure she was able to get the food she wanted. We spent a total of 3 hours in the restaurants from wait time until we finally got the bill.

The food was really good and that’s why I give this review 2 stars. We said maybe this is not the type of place to dine in and we can just order takeout instead in the future. However, I just looked at all the reviews for take out and it seems like they’re constantly missing order items too. We will not be coming back. I would only recommend this place if you have time to waste & you’re looking...

I’ve been here a couple of times and my family has enjoyed the food.

It had been a couple of years since we last came and decided to stop by for my mom’s birthday. Safe to say we will not be returning.

Our party of 5 arrived at 5pm and were sat down at around 5:45pm. This is fine, it was a busy day today. We placed our orders around 6pm, it included appetizers, drinks and entrees.

We were not being given any food or updates for a full 45 minutes. We even ordered some water as we were getting hungry and that took a good 5-10 minutes to get to our table.

The disappointing part was that after we brought this up we were given an excuse that their system was down, but then how were tables that were sat at the same time as us or after us, getting food and drinks before us?

We understand things get busy, but honesty goes a long way. It also wasn’t until we asked 45 minutes later that we were also made aware that one of our orders could not be fulfilled as they were out of that item.

Again how does it take 45 minutes to provide that information?

When the food came, an hour after we ordered, it was great so no complaints on the taste and the only reason this review...

Excellent place to enjoy authentic Colombian food. East Boston has a myriad of options for Hispanic food, but El Penol definitely stands out with its great quality food and friendly service. As attested by its consistent popularity among the locals, the place is certainly worth a visit. I recently had the chance to visit with my friends and got the tabla penol, bandeja paisa, and the soursop milkshake. Although we were the only non-Hispanic people in the restaurant, the servers were incredibly friendly and provided good explanations for the dishes we ordered. We started off with the tabla penol which was an assortment of different appetizers. Among these, my favorites were the fried empanadas and the pork rinds. Bandeja paisa subsequently came out in huge portions, and except for the steak, everything on the plate was delicious. The combination of fried pork belly, savory rice, and beans was especially satisfying. The soursop milkshake which tasted like a mix of coconut milk with honeydew was also a great drink to accompany with the food. Overall, these were undoubtedly the best south American dishes I had in Boston. Highly recommend...