Rio Tomatlan — Restaurant in City of Canandaigua

The worst dining experience I have ever had.

We made reservations two weeks in advance for a party of 10. We knew with covid that we would probably have a bit longer of a wait than precovid and were all completely fine with that. Our reservations were for 6:30 and we didn’t get seated until almost 7. We let it go. We ordered drinks from the bar as soon as we sat down and didn’t get the drink until well after 7:30, if not closer to 7:45/8:00pm. Again, we were letting it go. Our food arrived, some orders not correct and most of the orders cold. By this time it was past 8:00 and we were starving so we just wanted to eat, and frankly just leave. Two people ordered one more drink when our food arrived which didn’t arrive until we had paid the bill and were getting ready to stand up to leave. Prior to that, our waitress came over with separate checks for our table (which we thanked her for doing multiple times) and she gave us a few pens and said since she doesn’t write things down if she messed anything up to just write it on the bill and she will fix it when she swipes our cards. All the bills were accurate except for mine which charged us for 3 drinks instead of 1. I kindly wrote that down and mentioned it to her when she came back around. When I went to point it out she said that’s not possible because the amount of drinks she charged us all for was correct so we just must be paying for someone else’s drinks. No big deal, I will gladly cover that and we can work it out ourselves - except we had already gone through the bills and this was a clear over charge. We only ordered 11 drinks as a table and all 11 drinks were accounted for - plus the two extra we were being charged. The waitress still fought with us to which we spoke up and said we will just pay for it as we had been there over 2.5 hours by then and just wanted to leave. She then ripped the bill from my hands saying she just won’t charge us for “what we drank”. If the drinks weren’t $10+ and we weren’t billed for gratuity on top of that, I wouldn’t have said anything to begin with. This girl was clearly being over worked and I planned to tip her very well. After ripping the bill from my hands we could see her talking to another waitress and pointing to our table - clearly complaining about us. And when she came back to our table with the bills, she said absolutely nothing and walked off. Then to our lovely surprise, we were still charged for the drinks. We paid about $23 more for dinner for just my husband and I, then we should have.

Long story short, you’ll wait forever, have an extremely rude waitress and staff, be completely overcharged and yelled at when you bring up the mistake.

I am all for supporting small businesses right now, but I wouldn’t suggest to my worst enemy to go and have dinner there...

I recently placed a to-go order from Rio Tomatlan in Canandaigua and, while the flavors were impressive and the dishes seemed to reflect authentic Mexican cuisine, the portion sizes were extremely disappointing and failed to meet my expectations.

I ordered Pico de Gallo, Guacamole, and Ceviche del Dia from the Bocadillos section of the menu, as well as the Machete chicken quesadilla from the dinner menu. When I arrived home and opened the order, I was convinced there had been a mistake because my ceviche appeared to be missing. Upon calling the restaurant and speaking with a lovely hostess, I was informed that the order was indeed complete. To my surprise, the $15 ceviche consisted of a mere 4oz Solo condiment container, with the actual ceviche (fish and shrimp?) amounting to about 2/3 of that container—approximately 3oz. The remainder was filled with tomatoes and onions. While the flavors were very good and the fish appeared fresh, I was shocked by the minuscule portion.

Additionally, the $4.25 Pico de Gallo order also came in a 4oz container, which was equally underwhelming. Interestingly, the $12 guacamole came in a to-go container roughly four times larger than the ceviche and pico containers (about 16 ounces), which seemed more customary for such an order.

To add further disappointment, although the menu listed the cost of the ceviche as $14, I was actually charged $15. Given the tiny portion size, this unexpected additional charge felt like adding insult to injury.

While I typically prefer to address concerns directly with management before leaving a negative review, I was told that a manager was not available to speak with me. The hostess, however, was very professional and took my contact information.

In summary, while the food tasted very good, Rio Tomatlan should be more transparent about the serving sizes of their appetizers on the menu. If I had known I would receive such an insignificant quantity of ceviche for $15, I would have passed on that menu item—along with the Pico de Gallo. I hope the restaurant will take this feedback to heart and consider making adjustments to better meet customer...

unsafe food The 3 star review is out of fairness for the dozens of wonderful experiences we had at Rio previously. Unfortunately, I agree with other recent reviews that quality is going downhill. If I were to rate only our most recent Mother’s Day brunch experience, I would give 1 star. The hostess was unfriendly and could not have made us feel more unwelcome. Despite have a reservation, she gave off vibes that we were an inconvenience for even being there. I truly considered leaving before our waitress arrived. Secondly, our table was dirty with crumbs and sticky. We know that wait staff work very hard, so we cleaned off our own table and did not complain. We were the first seated of the day, but it took our waitress so long to get to us that we knew our whole entire meal order before she finally greeted us. Rio advertised a special menu for the Mother’s Day brunch. There was no special menu, it was a paired down version of the regular menu and not “brunch-y” whatsoever. The menu was still large enough that we thought we could find food and drinks we’d be happy with. My husband and I each got two different margaritas that we love and have had before. Both were made incorrectly- not even close. That was a bummer, but the bigger issue was when my husband bit into his entree and crunched on something hard. Upon spitting it out we realized it was broken fragments of some type of ceramic dish. His food was unsafe for consumption beyond that point and the rest of us lost our appetites. He was compensated 50% off his dish. That was probably one of the most unsafe experiences we have ever had dining out and should have been taken off the bill completely. It was a thoughtful touch to give the mother a tulip at the end of meal. Sadly, our many wonderful memories of excellent meals at Rio have been tainted by recent...