Temazcal Tequila Cantina — Restaurant in Boston

This review is for the Lynnfield location. So let me start by saying that I really wanted to love this place as it is about 4 minutes from my house. I also really love Mexican food, not so much a fan of Tex-Mex like Border Cafe or Fat Cactus (the Factus as we refer to it in our house). So....here goes. The chips and both the salsa verde and salsa roja were great. Salsa roja was the perfect combo of spicy and sweet. The salsa verde was smoky and hit the spot.

For our entrees... I always get the house margarita and the tacos at a new mexican place the first time I go because I feel like if you can't get tacos right, well I really don't want to spend much more to see what else you can screw up. I ordered a fried haddock taco and the carne asada taco. They usually come two of the same on a plate but I asked the for one of each and they obliged. I also got them both on corn tortillas. The fried haddock was the size of a meatball, short and fat so about three bites of the fish taco didn't have any fish and then the three bites in the middle of the taco had too much fish. Would have been nice to have a long, thinner piece of fish to match the taco proportions. It was tasty but didn't really have any kind of kick. The bummer was the Asada taco. For anyone who usually orders carne asada tacos, you are expecting strips of juicy skirt steak. Their version is shredded beef. Flavor again was ok, really nothing to write home when it comes to the marinade. My husband always gets whatever mole dish they have on the menu as he tends to be a but picky but loves mole. He got the mole enchiladas. He said the mole was bland, too sweet, and not spicy enough. This is coming from a white guy from Maine btw so it really doesn't need to be very spicy (I'm the one that loves spice). He also couldn't find much chicken in the enchiladas. He reported that it tasted like ground up chicken with too much cheese to mask the fact that there wasn't much chicken.

Dessert....We decided to give dessert a try and shared the chocolate lava cake. I've always been served this hot or at least very warm. This one was a little bit warmer than room temperature and there was no lava to be had...usually you cut into it and you have the lava flow from the dessert-not the case with this one. Also, when they say "with fresh berries" they mean two blackberries. That's right, TWO! I guess that is plural but a very small dollop of whipped, melting cream about the size of a quarter and two berries....boring!!

I didn't forget about the margaritas...the house margaritas were ok. I think the problem is that the drinks are made with ice in the shaker and then poured over ice so it all tastes very watered down. I personally love Jimador Blanco tequila which is the house tequila but too bland due to all the ice. At $9 a drink, you want to enjoy the taste of the tequila. The best thing I tried there was the Besos margarita made from Agavales Silver Tequila, St Germain, basil, and strawberry puree. At $13 a drink, it is pricey but didn't taste watered down.

Lastly, the service. We sat at the bar. Our bartender was nice enough, she just looked so glum the entire visit. Just one of those people who has a perpetual scowl on her face. The food came quickly but overall, we were underwhelmed. I've had a much better meal from Howling Wolf in Salem or Agave in Newburyport. Even Victoria Taqueria in Beverly has way better tacos at...

Amazing food and drinks. Temazcal is one of our favourites. Family was visiting from out of town and we wanted to come to Temazcal for throwback reasons (used to be our favourite place to visit). Came there and had a reservation (we were a few mins late to our reservation and called them to let them know). We still arrived within our 15 mins grace period. When we arrived, we were told that our table is 5 mins from being ready and then we waited for another 20. Every time we asked for a status update from the hostesses, they would rudely dismiss us by telling us that the table is being getting ready without giving us an ETA. When I had another person from our party check in with the hostesses, they pretended they didn’t know what was going on. We were finally seated 42 minutes after our reservation!!! The hostesses were so rude (especially the blonde one!!!) We asked to speak to the manager and that is when they “suddenly” found a table for us. When we finally sat down, they sent us a an overly nice waiter to “make up” for the horrible waiting experience, who even said “oh I know you had a bad time there (in the hostess area) but I’ll make sure you have a good time here”. Please note that up until that point NOT a SINGLE PERSON apologized for a horrible experience we had or called the manager that we asked for. At that point, we ordered a dish from the kids menu that had chips in it and they forgot the chips…😅 then they messed up our margaritas and said they would give them to us on the house and they never did.

We didn’t want to fight at that point and just paid for everything and still gave our waiter a nice tip but overall horrible experience with the staff. But that’s all seaport staff for you!!! And such a shame that it was a special occasion (which btw we noted in our reservation!) and no one acknowledged that and not only that but they also ruined the night tbh. Also they never even tried to offer us free apps or even apologized for the experience. the blonde hostess was just so freaking rude and gave me so much attitude as if I owed her something. Worst pasty is that if the guests are late for the reservation, our tables get immediately cancelled or we get a fee by the restaurants get nothing. We should have gotten at least 50$ off our dinner! Anyway long story short - Sour taste one our mouth, horrible experience. Please save yourself the stress and...

This past Saturday evening, my wife and I had a dinner reservation for 4:45PM. We were seated within a reasonable time of our reservation and Arturo was our server. Knowing the restaurant was busy and taking that into consideration was still no excuse for having to wait over 5 minutes for our server to come to the table, introduce himself and take our drink order, which we waited over 6 minutes to receive. We waited over 15 minutes to have him return to take our dinner order, meanwhile customers who sat down after us were served their cocktails before us and had their order taken before us. My wife ordered grilled chicken tacos, I had ordered the skirt steak tacos. When our food arrived, there was a hair in my wife's taco, we could not locate our server anywhere to tell him. We grab the next server that walked by who happened to be a woman she graciously apologized and took the meal back for a fresh one. The manager then came over to apologize and offered a desert on the house should we choose to want one. I began to eat my steak taco, one of the pieces of steak was raw, I had put it aside on my dish. My wife's dish finally arrived and this time no hair, however when she took a bite, the chicken she bit into was all fat and gristle which unfortunately, she had to dispose of in her napkin. We picked through our dinner and did not eat much of it as we had lost our appetite. Meanwhile the whole time our server Arturo did not visit the table once to ask how our dinner was or if we needed another beverage. It wasn't until the manager delivered my wife's food that we asked her if she could get us another cocktail. When we finished our cocktails, the manager was walking by and asked how things were, I politely told her how disappointed we were, showed her my raw steak and told her how my wife had to spit the chicken out in a napkin. She did take the plates off of our dinner tab, however we were greatly disappointed in general with the service from our waiter, the lack of attention and the quality of the food. We had heard so many good things about the restaurant and were really looking forward to our dinner. We have never eaten at either Temazcal locations and sadly we will never return to one or recommend this restaurant to any of our...