El Morro Restaurant — Restaurant in City of Geneva

It was late. It's Thanksgiving. Nothing is open. I have travelled all day with my wife and kids. My twin 18 month olds are at the tail end of fighting colds and my 7 year old has decided to be a nightmare. Nothing is going right .2 hour wait at Cracker Barrel? Yeah, ramen noodles in the hotel it is.

Get to the outlet mall. Not all the stores are open (including the ones we wanted to go to).

At this point, Thanksgiving is a nightmare. My wife, who I am surprised hasn't left me yet, says hey, let's see if we can find anything open downtown. That is when the Thanksgiving miracle began.

We drove by El Morro and thought, Puerto Rican food? Yes, please! I see a sign out front inviting any and all to a free Thanksgiving buffet from 1 to 6. It's 8pm but if you don't ask, you don't get anything. I walk in and the party is in full swing. Merengue playing, happy people dancing. Yes!

I ask the owner if he has anything hot and ready. I explain my wife and three kids are in the car. He disappeared into the back and returned with 4 boxes of food. And then filled another box from the buffet. Then, as he loads me up with paper plates and disposable cutlryc, he refuses to take a cent! He told me that if I insisted, I could tip his staff.

The food was DELICIOUS. Beans and rice. Turkey. Potatoes. Plantains. A big dish of seasoned turkey. Heaven! Thanksgiving was saved. In fact, I'll never forget the time I was shown the true spirit of Thanksgiving by a Puerto Rican gentleman running a small business in frozen, upstate New York.

If you want to support a local business, run by good people, living the American dream (and making delicious food) - go to El Morro. You'll be glad you did....

Unfortunately I can’t rate ZERO stars... Terrible customer service... We were a party of four, trying to find some good PuertoRican food, and the only acceptable things were the salad and the soda cans.... everything else was a punch in the face, mofongo was out of texture “like boiled, instead of fried”, no pork skin, no garlicky, just SOSO.... Please avoid “chicharrones de pollo”, it was just (one chicken drumstick divided in literally five OVERLY BREADED pieces), with NO FLAVOR and just a fried cracker texture.... “carne frita” was re-heated in still cool oil, after being overcooked (so you can imagine the texture and the flavor of that) totally GROSS.... sandwich was “a big disappointment” the bread itself was almost okay, and the meat taste was just NOT THERE, not even cheese (which is unacceptable for a sandwich) but that was it... and to finish the DISTASTEFUL experience, the “empanadas” were a fiasco of box mashed potatoes with some canned chicken flavor, the ground meat one, has a more okay flavor (still unacceptable) cheap product for the expectation at their price point “compared to better quality at better prices”... EVERYTHING WAS COVERED in mayo-ketchup-cilantro-oil (no options given) and we were told to “whenever you’re done, take your trash with you to the can outside” not even a reaction for our thanks. The only reason this people still in business is because they charge upfront, otherwise they’ll run out of business... NEVER AGAIN, worst...

I really wanted to love this place—as a Puerto Rican, I really, really wanted to love this place, but I couldn’t. The service was atrocious in a restaurant that we were the ONLY people sitting at! These people didn’t even offer us a glass of water. And, after TWENTY minutes (yes[!] twenty minutes!), when I asked if my wife and I could have a glass of water each, that’s when he brings us the drinks we paid for. The food was, honestly, mediocre—what we paid $66.00 was NOT worth it! Not for mediocre food and terrible service. At the end, when I approached the wait person, and spoke to him kindly—as a friend and a comp’ai—and told him I felt offended at how we’d been received and treated, when I urged him to receive people warmly, as if welcoming family, and offer each person a glass of water, reasoning with him that it wouldn’t prevent someone from buying drinks/beverages from the menu, he actually said to me that they’d been doing it that way for 11 years, so it wasn’t going to change.

I’m going to be a professor at HWS soon, and I will NEVER recommend this place to anyone. In fact, whenever someone asks me, I’m going to tell them the truth about what poor experience I had there.

11 years? You all should be embarrassed that you haven’t learned to receive people better after that much time. I can see why it’s a sad place with not much of a future left here. Deben estar abochornados de llamarse boricuas, y tratar a ninguna...