Raices — Restaurant in Caguas

I sincerely dont give bad reviews, But I did this one cause I am really upset cause couple of friends sell me this place as the big thing but we didn't have that experience. When we came we automatically were sended to wait (we are 2, we were wearing casual but still on a 23 Anniversary lunch date...I don't wanna think because our phisical appearence) But the next group standing were 7 people and they were attended and seated at the moment. Their appeatence were different from ours) 🤔

2 of the items on the menu we ask to have they were not serving it anymore (need to update the menu)

When a puertorrican restaurant called Raices have a appetizer called Tacos con pernil al cardero you expect the dough-y thing that you fry NOT THE MEXICAN TORTILLA because we are on a puertorrican rest. So please put a notice is a mexican taco.

My husband ask for a Parcha mojito...He recieve a normal mojito

I ask for the stuffed dorado with shrimp and arroz mampostiao and recieve chillo a la criolla with arroz mampostiaso.

Is so sad to tell but the rice was rotten (slipery, slimey that I know it was long time out unrefrigerate. Actually it happens to me in my kitchen when i leave a caldero with rice from 12 to 18 hrs..it get squichy...and the smell seriously smell like that. It was like made with the beans and the rice from two days before and seriously it had just 3 beans), no veggies..Just the rice made wit the sauce of the beans [agua de sazon y caldo de habichuela..no sal]

The plate that my husband ask couldn't be altered, He ask also for mampostiado but it has to be with vianda mash. (I guess they made the plates on mass production)

When a restaurant get renoun or really famouse they tend to slack and take for granded the quality of the product and they get used to recieve money and just preocupied of the quantity instead of the quality (therefore they attended the group after us instead of us because we were just 2 ) We are a family of foodies, we went inside PR and outside The island to taste and enjoy restaurants. And is sad a Rest. So "famouse" is being by far this bad at least with us. (You can see my other reviews and almost all are 5 stars cause we follow other reviews and friends opinions) Maybe it was a bad Sunday. *Is so sad, Please improve on the freshness and the In the moment plate service, I am not a hater. I wished you could fix this and soon I can hear you improve and I can come back and fix the stars and tell my other friends to go and taste a real boricua gastronomic experience.

Salad and raices del cielo were good. PLEASE INSTEAD OF MEXICAN TACO DO THE FRY...

Not a great experience. Appetizers were brought out with no small plates so we ended up using napkins to place our appetizers on. It’s a shame because the Bacalaitos & Alcapurrias were pretty good. Appetizers were brought out before our drinks. The drinks didn’t come out until 10 minutes after the appetizers were finished. We ordered gin & tonics with a twist and what was brought out was gin on the rocks with a bottle of tonic on the side, no twist. Strange to say the least.

We ordered a Shirley Temple for our nephew. They didn’t bring it because they didn’t know how to make it.

They never offered to bring out water until we asked for it when the main course was served. During all of this, our waitress was nowhere to be found and never checked on us until we asked another waitress for water and napkins. It seems that she didn’t bother to check on us until the other waitress told her we were annoyed.

When the rice & beans were served, as part of our main course, no spoons were brought out to serve the beans with. When asked for spoons, they brought one spoon when we had three separate orders of beans.

Again, the food wasn’t bad, but the service was atrocious. The restaurant closes at 9pm, we weren’t close to being done eating, when the valet shows up at our table with my car keys and lets me know that he moved my car out front since they were closing. Again, strange …

When we ordered desserts, we asked if they could just serve us plain cheesecake instead of the fried cheesecake on the menu. The waitress said they could. Low & behold, they come out 10 minutes later with fried cheesecake. When we reminded them that all we wanted was plain cheesecake, they said they didn’t have plain cheesecake, so we canceled the cheesecake order.

This place has a lot of potential because they make pretty good food and the restaurant looks nice. They just have to get out of their own way with the self inflicted...

We were very disappointed with our meal here… Even though it was not crowded on a Thursday evening, we were seated at a small table underneath an extremely bright light.

That was only the beginning of the problems with the meal, though. We ordered an entire bottle of wine (and not a cheap one), but we realized about halfway through the bottle that it was not actually the one we had ordered.

Still nothing terribly a mess at that point. However, when the food came, it was almost inedible. I had the paella, the only good thing about it was that the rice was hot, and the peas were fresh. The shrimp were really rubbery, one of the three muscles I got was not open, and one of them was empty. The one muscle that was in the dish was not great. The crawfish that was served on top was only OK. The larger problem was: my boyfriend got the mofongos with skirt steak, and it was not good. His whole dish was basically cold when it came out, the steak was rubbery and sort of tasteless. The plantains that form the base of the dish were also cold and rubbery.

So disappointing- we were only in town for one night and hoped for a good authentico meal and...