La Buena Vida - Cary — Restaurant in Cary

My third time dining here (at dinner time) was really disheartening.

First, my husband had to look for a parking space and ended up carefully parking in a designated parking area that has 2 large planters/pot in it. It was in front of the restaurant.

We had our baby with us since we really thought this was a restaurant (our previous visits were in the morning) but music was very loud and explicit at night. Fog machine was way up about 6 meters high, exuding fog every 5 minutes. I actually told my husband I'm worried for the baby but he shrugged the matter off.

We still decided to stay despite the waiter saying they don't have Sushi (but it's on their menu) and that was actually the reason why we went back that night-we wanted to get sushi but nada. We were hungry so we just stayed, after we had our entrees, I got a dessert, a flan, my husband paid and tipped and this was were it went all the way down hill.

I didn't like my flan. It was flat, had a lot of bubbles and texture was rubbery. No creamy taste at all. It was just drizzled with caramel, condensed milk, sweet cream and strawberries but tha main point- the flan- was bland and inedible.

I called the waiter and he said, "how can I make it better"? I said maybe you can just give us another dessert and we can just pay for the difference. He said he can't do that because we already tasted the flan. (How will we know it's bad without tasting it?)

Turns out it was their house rules not to exchange or refund any food that you've already ordered even if you find it inedible- paraphrasing what the manager told me some days after the incident.

The waiter, also, that time said, "If your problem is just the texture then you'll be fine." But isn't a flan all about the texture?

I really tried to be calm with my concern that night. But when I saw four staff whispering infront of us and when the waiter was about to argue, I just decided to leave. My husband, who liked going back to this place, has spent about 250usd for all the meals we've had there but they can't refund/change a 7-dollar flan. We were already patrons but now we're not coming back.

I shared my story in a group chat and my friends ended up rating the place as a support for me. (I have now told them to take their reviews off.) This serves as a lesson for the restaurant. What if a person they dismissed has a large following on Social Media? Ponder about all the possibilities that could happen.

The manager offered me a gift card. She said we can both benefit from it. She said my benefit would be, I can get a "free meal" and for the restaurant, I can edit my review. I didn't take it. It wasn't a genuine apology but a mere deal.

She still insisted the flan was well-made so I rest my case....

I was deceived by the experience I had the first time. The first time I went there with my parents, we had a great time as the service was great (even though it was a busy day and they were understaffed), food and drinks were great, and the ambience was really nice. However, I then went back a second time with my friends and the experience was nothing like the first time. We had to wait an hour or so for our food and even when the food did arrive one of my friends was given the wrong food (he had asked for burrito with chicken and shrimp instead of chicken and chorizo but they served him chorizo and shrimp burrito). They then brought out the right food (burrito with chicken and shrimp) for him but the meat was undercooked. Upon getting the check, we noticed were charged for both food items and we pointed it out to them. They were nice enough to remove one of burritos but kept the other one on there still, so we tried to talk to them about whether they could take that one out as well as the chicken was undercooked. So then the manager came over, who was not cooperative with us at all. When we tried to explain him our situation with the burritos, instead of being responsive to his customers' complaints, he started to point out how many bites he saw my friend take from his food and then proceeded to say this is how burritos cooked. So when I then responded with saying "so burritos are cooked with undercooked meat?" and he said "this is how burritos here are cooked and there is nothing wrong with our burritos ever". We then noticed that we were charged 18% gratuity on our check and when we pointed that out to them saying that your menu says that the 18% gratuity is only when the bill is over $100, we were told that "oh parties of 5 or more are also charged with 18% gratuity". However, that is not mentioned anywhere in the menu and most restaurants do automatic gratuity of parties of 6 or more and will always have that mentioned in their menu. Additionally, we were not informed that there would be additional charges for chips and salsa after the first round that's on the-house. When we tried to point out to them that all other restaurants always give chips and salsa on the house (unlimited), so if they are going to charge for additional rounds of chips and salsa then they should have it on their menu or inform their customers about it as their menu only says charge for "salsa combo and chips". Truly disappointed by the disregard shown towards customers at this restaurant, they should try being more receptive towards customer feedback rather being blatantly dismissive and rude. They better pray to god that none of us get...

First, we went during their soft opening so I am willing to give lots of leeway. Unfortunately, they aren’t sure what they are yet. The food was too good to be a night club and the music was too loud to be a sit down restaurant. We were waited on right away, but it took over an hour to get our drinks. The food actually came out before everyone in our party had their drinks. They lost so much money! We easily could have ordered two to three drinks in that time, and some in our party only had beer and wine.

I think the biggest issue though was the music was not just loud, it was painfully loud. We even asked them to turn it down. I was told by our waiter he didn’t think they could do that. My entire body was literally shaking from the bass. Then finally after another person in our party asked someone else, it got turned down for about one song. We couldn’t hear our poor servers when they came out with our dishes until they were yelling right by our ears. This was all at a 6:30pm reservation. I could understand pumping up the music after 9pm, but there isn’t even room to dance. If you like music so loud your ears hurt after five minutes, fog machine mist in your food, not being able to talk to the people you came with, and only getting one drink in two hours, then this is the meal place for you.

The only reason we didn’t leave after ten minutes was because we were there with a group and didn’t want to leave our friends. But we ended up leaving as soon as we finished eating anyways because the loudness started affecting some of our groups health.

The food was superb. Lots of gluten free options! The chef here is wasted in my opinion. If they ever decide to make the atmosphere more conducive to digestion I’d come back. Or if they even decided to only have bar food and create a true club, I’d come back. But I’m not looking to have my bones feel bass while trying to sit down for a meal. Once they’ve figured out what kind of establishment they plan on being I might give it another try, either for dinner with reasonable sound or for dancing and some fun drinks (as long as they learn to speed up their drink service). Right now the only space to dance is the table tops. And it wasn’t great watching one of their patrons do so in her bare feet at 7:30pm while trying...