El Mesón de Melquiades — Restaurant in Cayey

El Meson de Melquiades is a well known place within Puerto Rico central mountains that serve a variety of dishes from simple ones (such as rice beans with skirt steak) to more exotic ones (such as boar). It is elegantly decorated and has a nice deck outside (see photo).

Parking is rather limited and most of the time you will be using the valet service but the valet employees are friendly and speedy.

The waiters are hit or miss. They are sort of friendly but based on my last couple of visits they have been all over the place, making us wait for taking our orders, asking repeatedly for our same orders by different waiters, and slow to follow up with our refreshments. It seems that the waiters are not assigned by table but cover all the restaurant making the experience a mess.

The menu options are not bad but rather limited. Most of the meats will be accompanied mainly with either mushroom sauce or chimichurri which is rather dull. The dish presentation is average at best. The portions are also average but the prices are not. The average price of the dishes is around $19 to $24. There are higher prices of course ($30+) but in my opinion not worth it except for the novelty factor (Boar meat for example).

The worst offender in my opinion is the "manual entry" of the tip into your tab by the cashier/waiter. They AUTOMATICALLY included in our tab a 15% tip without consulting us. Normally this is done in big groups but we were only 2! This could also be the result of using a coupon of $25 in which they seem not too happy for (even though our tab totalled over $100 without the coupon). Its bad policy for a restaurant to force you to pay tips regardless of the quality given.

El Meson de Melquiades WAS a good place to go once in a while, but it hardly contains an incentive to call it a favorite place anymore. It is remotely located, its service is slow and its food is not that outstanding as to make you forget its overall faults. There are better options that are closer, have more variety, agile service, and honest treatment that you will feel inclined to call your...

From what I heard, this place was very different from what is now. Used to be a humble but very good place to go. Now, it has become a fancy, very expensive restaurant. Also, the portions have shrink from what they used to be. Very sad.

Hello, owner of El Mezon de Melequiades. Three people in our group visited your restaurant when it was in the humble wooden house that you needed to climb to get there, they even knew your father, but it was our first time for the other 3 in the group. What I heard was from them, they had visited the restaurant since the 1980s. It was their opinion about the changes that we didn't like. If you can see, I didn't write anything negative about the food, it tasted good, even one in the group found the chicken as one of the best tasted. That doesn't mean that the portions served are enough for the price. We visited many fine dining restaurants and we can compare them. We still believe that it was too expensive. From what I read, you expressed that your restaurant was not appreciated by us and that your restaurant is not for us. That is a very sad response. We wish the best for you, and the restaurant...

Agree with other clients that service is excellent. Food is like any other "Fonda" where food is good but not excellent. Maybe at the level of Metropol, Luccios (Cidra) but not at the 5 or 4 star level. Menu does not have prices per dish which all who know about restaurants can only agree that this detail is a NO NO. Prices for dish are not commensurate with quality of food. Too expensive. An"Churrasco" with side would cost you $10 to $15 any other place at this level. Not even a excellent Argentinian Restaurant such as " Caminito" (Suchville Plaza) serves a churrasco at this exsesive price. I gave it a 1 star because it seemed deceptive towards clients. If you are in this area and you don't mind food in the $$$$ ball park, I Recommend " El Meson de Melquiades" which is a official " Meson Gastronómico " of Tourisim Dept. if not , just go to any of the Lechón (Pork) rest and you will be equally satisfied with not...