dorado — Restaurant in City of Rochester

Taco Bell has better Mexican food and better service as well. Exceedingly slow service; it took the waitress over 20 minutes to get drinks for me and my date and when the drinks did arrive, it tasted as if there was no alcohol in them at all. By the time the waitress returned to our table, the ice in our drinks had all but melted making the problem that much worse. When I told her our problem, she did apologize and offer to bring us new drinks. Before I was able to open my mouth to ask for a new drink, she was already helping another table. When she returned 10 minutes later, I had moved on from my drink and just wanted to order. My date ordered enchiladas and I ordered a couple of tacos. As we waited for our food, the waitress never came back to see if we wanted new drinks or even to refill our waters. After what seemed like a month and a day our food had arrived. My date was disappointed to only see one enchilada on her plate even though she ordered ENCHILADAS and shock, the temperature of my tacos was somewhere between an ice cube and hot pocket that has been microwaved for 45 seconds. Our waitress took my took my tacos back to the kitchen seemingly to throw them in their microwave and that was fine with me; at that point I just wanted to eat and leave. Now I don't know if they are using a microwave from 1967 but, it took a good 10 or so minutes to get them back. Now my tacos were as warm as a hot pocket that was microwaved for a solid minute as opposed to a mere 45 seconds. I ate them just to leave as soon as possible. As an attempt to compensate us for our troubles the waitress said she would bring a dessert on the house. She brought us a plate of apple crisp she said was "right from the oven", the apples were from a can and were ice cold just making the entire situation and her comment about the oven insult to injury. I wasted 40 dollars and two hours on two tacos, one enchilada and two watery drinks. I tipped a whole nickel too.

(in our waitress' defense, she was the only serve staff working ten busy tables...

Alcohol-free Vegan here: The menu is not very vegan/alcohol-free friendly, but I usually expect that Mexican restaurants can pull something together for me to eat. I ordered a non-alcoholic drink (bartender’s choice) and was given a delicious virgin something-or-other, which I was surprised to find out cost exactly the same as my friends’ alcoholic drinks. I ordered soft tacos with tofu, and asked my server if the chef could load it up with every possible vegan ingredient, but I received just tofu in tortillas, with a side of undressed greens. Even my server, upon seeing what they were delivering to me said “you probably want something more than that” and brought me salsa. I unfortunately had to send back my plate, because each of tortillas had some melted cheese on them, not in error, just clearly prepared in the same area as dairy products, and there was some cross-contamination. (I would have picked it off if it weren’t on every one of my tortillas.) I received a new contaminate free plate, (again, just tofu in a tortilla next to naked greens,) and I stuffed the greens in my tacos, and dunked them in salsa. Everything tasted really great. However, it’s not great that my meal was so sparse and boring that even my server said “you probably want something else.” Seriously though: rice, beans, avocado? Why do these things all have dairy? Was there no chef on the line who, upon making my plate could have thought “maybe I should dress this up a bit, 5 dollars for 5 cubes of tofu in a tortilla isn’t exactly on par with the other overstuffed tacos on the menu”? I expect Park Ave restaurants to be on the mid to high end as far as price, but I certainly didn’t expect to pay what I did for the meal I got. Chefs: time to rethink and expand your vegan options, please put something substantial on your menu that doesn’t embarrass your servers when they have to deliver it. Line workers: cross contamination is not OK, even if it’s not gonna kill your customers. Bartenders: if juice shouldn’t cost the same as...

Dorado is special to me and I have made many memories thanks to the experiences I’ve had here. I’ve been going here since 2021ish.

Today it’s taco Tuesday and my birthday and so I decided to celebrate it here.

For context, today it was very busy and with only 1-2 waiters working things were taking longer than usual. And they had a new trainee on their first day (so my experience might have been a one-off) . The restaurant was full and our order took about 40 mins. This was understandable but not the ideal situation.

The order: 2 chicken street tacos 2 brisket street tacos 1 chimichanga (chicken) 1 salmon entree

The chicken was dry and bland. This affected two dishes: chimichanga and the chicken tacos. The tacos were the biggest let down. The first taco’s tortilla (chicken street tacos) I got was stale and crumbly. And had a weird taste to it. All other soft shells were fine. The chimichanga lacked flavor and tasted plane. House hot sauce to the rescue, it was amazing and different than the usual store brought ones. I literally screwed off the top of the hot sauce bottle and poured it all over the chimichanga adding a nice kick and a much need tangy flavor.

I’m sharing this review hoping things improve. And, I look forward to trying Dorado again in the future.

FYI: the restaurant did...