La Fonda Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Camp Verde

From what I understand this restaurant has been in continuous family operation for 40 years. I understand why. Whatever you order is authentic. I have traveled to Mexico a number of times and enjoyed the local food. This restaurant in Cottonwood has somehow been able to maintain authentic tastes and recipes throughout time. The food is served on very hot plates. When they say be careful your plate is hot believe them. The chips are warm and fresh. The salsas are served with two choices of hot or more mild. The chili relleno was perfection. It had a very light egg batter. Often, chile rellenos at some restaurants are served with some breading. The tamale was served with generous portions of meat stuffed inside the cornmeal and then a corn husk. Once again, a very authentic tamale with perfect seasoning. It's amazing how a little extra provided with a meal make such a difference in the eyes of the guest. La Fonda serves a warm sopapilla with their meal. It was excellent and I of course had to have a little honey which they were happy to provide. As a side note a server was kind enough to direct my wife to the restroom instead of just pointing to a general location. I think The quality of the restaurant was especially surprising because it is a bit off the beaten path. This alone is a tribute to its long-standing success. Many times if a restaurant isn't convenient or challenging to find they simply cannot succeed. Part of the charm of this restaurant is its isolated location off of a main highway.. To sum it up, there is no secret to why certain restaurants succeed. Their people, their quality of food, their decor, and the desire to make people happy. In the case of La Fonda they succeed on all...

WATCH YOUR FOOD FOR JEWELRY OR BACTERIA INFECTIONS Im very familiar with the Lafonda's in Flagstaff, so this was my first time eating at this location. Upon coming in, the hostess unlocked the doors and I let an elderly couple go in front of me. The older gentleman was trying to talk to her but she was so unfriendly and just looked at him. I sat myself near the window facing the kitchen. I watched how the food cook staff had touch a few tacos without gloves. There's a big table in the middle of the front walkway that has the employees drinks on it. What's the purpose of that table? Move it, it's obstructing the flow of traffic walking in. While watching the cooks thru the window, there's no gloves being used at times to handle food, there's a cook wearing big dangling hoop earrings, while hovering over the food. What if that fell into the big pot, bread dough or chili? When leaving the restaurant I talked with the manager about the things I seen, showed her the pics I will post, but her attitude was standoffish and she defended them having their drinks out in plain view and handling customers food. She defended the cook wearing the earrings saying she allows them to and the health department never says anything about it. She then got upset and asked me if i'm health department. I just told her i'm familiar with working in a food industry and that I hope they don't get anyone sick or choke on jewelry that fell in their food. All in all... The food was delicious, the presentation was good but the staff actions, staff drinks out in the open and the earrings didn't look...

The LaFondas in Flagstaff is good and saw the rave reviews for this LaFondas in Camp Verde so I thought it'd be a safe bet here, too. It was not. Chips and salsa were good, but my friend and I ordered two 16 oz frozen margaritas and the bartender first gave us on-the-rocks ritas. She took em and came back with 1/4 frozen margaritas (frozen on top but liquid the rest) like it looked like she had tossed the same drinks into a blender. It ended up tasting like lime water, wasn't too happy about it but wasn't going to make it a big issue, even though they did have an actual frozen margarita machine going in the back but it appears we didn't get served that. Asked for the check so we could get real margaritas somewhere else. Wasn't going to make a big deal of it but then when we received our check we saw we were charged the wrong size margaritas. When trying to rectify the mistake with our waitress, she said the bartender had brought us the wrong size by mistake and the manager said to charge us for the larger sized drink either way. How were we supposed to know what size we got, we weren't ever communicated this and we weren't going to pay for someone else's mistake after getting our initial order wrong, especially since it was basically $17 water. I'm in the restaurant biz and this would never happen to the customer, upcharging after the staff's mistake. Our check was resolved after bringing it to the managers' attention again but received pushback, definitely not returning. Our waitress was great, but staff and manager alike needs some communication and quality customer...