La Fortaleza Clifton — Restaurant in Clifton

First impressions:

The restaurant is super cool. Your mind would go crazy finding new things to look at in every corner.

I askednthe valet if we had to valet our vehicles or if we had the option to park our own vehicles. (I'm very particular with my vehicles). His answer. "You have to valet. We work only off tips so please tip well"

The good (service):

service was good for the most part. The birthday song and presentation were great.

The not so good (service):

The bussers kept trying to take plates away that we were still working on without asking and I had to ask several times for refills on my seltzer water and I ended up not getting one of the sides of Mexican rice I asked for 3 times.

The good (food):

The Calamari was good. The salsa was on point.

The not so good (food):

The Nachos ended up needing to be cut with a knife and served like a slice of pizza. They didn't skimp on the cheese... but they skimped on the shrimp.

The guacamole was expensive.. so it had to be good... but the amount of lime/lemon juice used overpowered how great it could have been. Most of the chips weren't full chips.. but broken pieces at the end of the bag type of ships.

We had 4 salmon dishes, and they were dry. My shrimp in Diablo Sauce was spicy (which I love), but it just fell short of my expectations. It was just a tiny bit of rice... the saucy shrimp with the onions and sauce and really chunky veggies that needed to be cut to eat.

Also every single thing that we ordered came out piping "cool"... yes.. you were thinking I'd say piping hot... but no... everything was warm.. almost room temp. I know they were busy by the time we left.. but nothing came to us hot like it was just prepared.

When leaving I asked the lady at the front for change of a $20 for the valet guys. I totally forgot to ask my waiter. She was nice and said "the valet guys can break your $20.. no problem". So before the guy got my vehicle I asked him to break my $20 and he said "isn't this for me?" I said "I'm asking for you to give me some smaller bills please." He said "ok... but how much you give me?" I started to get upset but i understood that he works just off of tips. I still ended up tipping him well even though my car was 10 feet from where we stood.

You may think that I being really critical in my review.. but I just want to honest with my families experience. I honestly would give them another try... in hopes that it was an...

What a horrible place. I’ve been to this chain before and never experienced this nasty kind of robbery. My table and I all ordered drinks, simple drinks from the menu. When the drinks came they were exceedingly elaborate. My virgin pins colada came in a pineapple which I never asked for and is not advertised on the menu. The price on the menu is $7 for said drink (I knew the pineapple would be more and was waiting to see the bill). My cousin ordered a margarita. It came in an albeit beautiful display but definitely not what she ordered. She brought it up to the waitress saying “you can take this bad this is not what I wanted, as it’s $30, and the one I ordered is $15” and the waitress, Camila, said “no, this is what your getting and you wouldn’t like the other one anyway, it’s too sweet. You ordered a margarita not a cocktail”… WHAT. So wouldn’t take it back. After that little tidbit we shut up and drank our drinks and ordered food. Waitress was clearly annoyed at us for not allowing her to up charge for stuff we did not want and barely visited the table again. THEN WE GET THE CHECK. Not only was my $7 pins colada priced at $17. There were THREE on the receipt!! I did order a second at the $7 price, but that was not on the receipt. Only the $17 and two $12 ones. WRONG. Then the souvenir drink we were literally forced to keep was also charged. Cherry on top was the added gratuity. mind you, we were a table of 4. Needles to say we spoke to the manager. But it was FAR from done. They had to bring the check to us 4 separate times, cause each time we showed them an incorrect charge or added item, they would adjust it and simply move the item to the lower end of the check hoping we wouldn’t notice. You guys are disgusting. And ultimately by the way, while the tip was eventually removed and we still left you Ana Camila, a $20 tip which you woefully do not deserve, we noticed the 6th drink that was added to the tab when we had only ordered five, and simply gave up our fight in having your incompetent establishment fix this check for the fifth time. Shame on you. Your place is horrid and you’re a sad excuse for a restaurant. Also, grow up and serve tap...

Ok guys let me start. I was here on feb 18th 2022 around 7pm , place was busy it took like 5 minutes to get seated , have to mention that they have a valet parking; Next our server (Camila) greeted our table within 8 minutes it was great timing we order apps , drinks, entrees and desserts at the end. We stayed there for about 3+ hrs because the atmosphere was great and the service was just perfect. The only thing we didn’t like at all was 2 things. First we got charge for “souvenirs” and they did added the gratuity 18% to our bill. After i saw this I spoke to our server it was fixed they took off the chargers for the souvenirs and the gratuity. So be careful when you about to pay because the margaritas are $22 bucks and I was getting charge $43 bucks per margarita because of the cups aka souvenirs and we weren’t taking none of the cups plus didn’t explained to us about this “deal” it feels like they stealing to us also the auto gratuity, they should explain to the tables that parties of 2 or more are auto gratuity It was 3 of us in the table and our bill was $287 with the gratuity and the souvenirs after we spoke to our server our check was $215 souvenirs were taken off and the auto gratuity too. We never complained about the gratuity but we did spoke about the souvenirs Overall we had a great time and we left $50 bucks tip. We are servers too and we know how the tip % works they all hustle in that place but plz if any manager see this you shouldn’t be doing the souvenirs game without telling ppl that’s stealing because not everyone is taking those cups and also explain to ppl how your gratuities works what’s your policy because that’s also stealing. people isn’t forced to leave a tip if they don’t feel like the service was good enough for them and others are just as%*#...