Sunset Cantina — Restaurant in Brookline

🌞 Sunset Cantina Review 🌮🍹

Location & Vibe: Tucked away on Commonwealth Ave, Sunset Cantina promises an experience that's vibrant with a casual, sports-bar atmosphere. Known for its history as a gathering spot for BU students, my boyfriend and I ventured there hoping to relive some fond memories of nacho-filled evenings. The ambiance is laid-back, perfect for a lively game night. 🏈🍻

Drinks: The bar at Sunset Cantina remains its stronghold. With a robust selection of cocktails and beers, the drinks are crafted to kickstart any gathering. We found the cocktails to be particularly well-mixed, adding a refreshing twist to our afternoon. 🍸✨

Starters - Chips & Queso Dip: Our meal started on a shaky note with the chips, which were unfortunately stale, detracting from the overall enjoyment. However, the queso dip provided a slight redemption with its intriguing mix of grilled corn salsa and a dash of tajin, offering a zesty flavor that partially made up for the lackluster chips. 🌽🧀 Rating: 4/10

Main Attraction - Beef Empanadas: The highlight of our dining experience came in the form of their beef empanadas. Filled with tender, slow-cooked shredded beef and creamy Monterey Jack cheese, these empanadas were flavorful and cooked to a delightful finish, standing out as the most memorable dish of our visit. 🥟🌟 Rating: 7/10

Salads - A Healthy Twist: We sampled the Mexican Caesar and steak & avocado salads, aiming for something on the lighter side. While both salads were generous in portion, featuring a decent amount of meat, they lacked a certain flair and were generally average, failing to impress beyond their wholesome presentation. 🥗🥑 Rating: 5/10

Birria Tacos - A Missed Opportunity: As a fan of birria tacos, I was eager to dive into this dish, but it fell short of expectations. The tacos lacked the rich, deep flavor typical of birria, and the meat was scant, leading to an unbalanced bite where the taco shell overshadowed the filling. 🌮👎 Rating: 4/10

Overall Experience: While the drinks lived up to the festive spirit of the place, the food struggled to match up, delivering a mixed bag of hits and misses. The setting and price point make it a reasonable choice for casual dining, especially if you're in the area to watch a sports event and enjoy some drinks.

Final Scores: Food: 5/10 Affordability: 7/10 Ambiance: 5/10

Hoping my feedback is seen as constructive. I love capturing and sharing food experiences and always root for places to thrive. 📸💖 If you're looking to watch a sports game with a good drink this might still...

from the moment we sat down at our table this place was a disaster. the waiter had an extremely poor attitude and when asked about the margarita specials for cinco de mayo he had a major tude just because we wanted to know if we could get a flavored margarita. it was clear from the beginning he clearly did not enjoy us despite the fact we literally were just like any other table and minded our own business? to start we ordered the dip trio which includes guacamole, queso, and salsa. first of all, the salsa genuinely tasted like watered down tomato sauce. second of all, I took a chip with some guacamole and once i started to chew I felt a weird texture. Fast forward two seconds as I proceed to pull a long strand of hair out of my mouth that was inside of our guacamole. This was about 30 minutes into our time at Sunset and the waiter had absolutely disappeared at this point. When he finally came around (only because I made eye contact), I told him about the hair and he didn’t even fully react almost like he wasn’t shocked. He then asked me if I told anyone as if he wasn’t our waiter and I was expected to hunt down another staff member to report this. The food itself was extremely disappointing and so overpriced. The birria quesadilla lacked flavor and was genuinely an offense to what birria is supposed to taste like. When we asked for chips because the tables ran out we were charged for that??????? I understand we’re in a tough economic situation but charging for more table chips when you’re a literal mexican restaurant is absurd. Fast forward to the end, we order churros which were actually so small and should not have cost $10. Additionally, it came with vanilla icecream which was served in a to go condiment container…… This was actually the cheapest serving of icecream to top churros I’ve ever seen in my entire life and not even the dollar store would do that to me. Overall, this place is extremely overprice, food is lacking in quality for what they charge, and Andres (I understand you might be a student) but this clearly is not the job for you if you cannot...

I wish I could rate this place a zero for their ineptitude and the manager's lack of concern for the well-being of his customers. This has been the WORST restaurant experience of my entire life. I came here looking to get drinks and food. This blond bartender (we'll refer to him as Draco Malfoy here) got me and my boyfriend a drink, and then proceeded to go around the bar and never once popped over to ask how we were doing. Draco made my boyfriend's drink completely wrong and as my boyfriend was waiting to ask him to remake it, I had already finished my drink. I had talked to another server when I was done to ask for Draco, and I saw the server tell him that we were looking for him. We kept waiting, while seeing Draco chatting casually with other bartenders across the bar. I decided to put on a timer just to see how long it'd take him to make his way back here. Ten minutes later (I literally timed him on my phone), he comes back and asks us if we were getting food. My boyfriend sent the drink back with no sips taken out of it for it was not what he ordered. By the time Draco came back to ask how everything was, we lost interest in the place. We told him to close our tab and then proceeded to wait for EVEN LONGER. Angry, I asked to talk to the manager, who made matters SO, SO, SO MUCH worse. As we were explaining the situation to him, he disregarded every issue we had and kept mentioning how he took off the UNTOUCHED drink from the bill as if he was doing us some kind of favor. We reiterated the fact that the drink was improperly made as well as untouched and it should be a given that he'd take it off, as it would have been at ANY half-way respectable restaurant. He then WALKED AWAY from us while we were speaking to him mid-sentence. This is by far the most ridiculous way I've ever seen a manager treat his customers. Whoever owns/manage this place needs to establish some standards for...