Mar Azul — Restaurant in Columbus

My husband and I have been wanting to try this place for a while. We got dressed up for a photo shoot and decided to go here for a date afterward. This was a mistake.

The restaurant did not feel like a Mexican restaurant. It had Spanish music, but nothing else reminded me that it was a Mexican restaurant. The entire place was remodeled. It looked great, just doesn't give a Mexican restaurant vibe. The bathrooms look great, except for the toilets. There was a broken toilet seat and the stall I used didn't have toilet paper. The stalls had a painting on them, which was super cool.

The menu didn't have many vegetarian options. There were maybe 3 options. When discussing our orders with the waiter, the waiter seemed a bit confused. When the food arrived, the food was not what was ordered. My husband wanted to add rice and beans into his enchilada/quesadilla/whatever it was he got. The waiter only had cheese in it. My order was completely different from what the menu said. My quesadilla was supposed to have mushrooms and cauliflower in it. There were onions added that were not listed on the menu. I don't remember what else was supposed to be on it exactly, but for sure was missing mushrooms, and cauliflower and onions were not supposed to be included. I had a bite of the broccoli, it wasn't cooked all the way. A person, who may have been the manager, came to talk to me. I mentioned that the broccoli and cauliflower would need to be thoroughly cooked for me because it will tear my stomach up if it isn't. I also mentioned that I couldn't have onions due to my sensitivities. They redid my food, but the order still wasn't right. I didn't make a big deal about it because it looked good. I was also super tired and wanted my food so that I could eat and go home. Instead of ensuring the broccoli and cauliflower were cooked all the way, they did away with it completely. The black beans that came with it had tomatoes in them. I didn't realize tomatoes would be in it. Due to health issues, I can only have a small number of tomatoes. When they brought my new plate, they removed the black beans and gave me an extra portion of the rice. The food was mediocre. The tortilla shells were not very thick. In other places, the shells are thicker.

The waiter wasn't very attentive. I drank all my water and had to use my husband's water. The waiter didn't notice. When the manager came out, he noticed and refilled them.

It took way longer than it should have to get the check and a to-go box. We tried to flag down the waiter several times and didn't get anywhere. We he brought us the check, he said we could either pay at the table or pay at the register. We thought the register would be quicker. As we looked closer at the bill, we noticed there was a $1.05 fee for using a card. We have never been to a restaurant that charges a fee for using a card. To avoid the fee, we paid cash. This made things complicated. The register must not have been able to do cash. The lady had to go find our waiter to complete the payment. The waiter miscalculated the correct change. He gave us $19, it was supposed to be $19.93. We asked where the change was and he said he gave us $19, that's all he owed us. My husband and I both pulled our calculators out on our phones and showed him what he owed us. Then instead of giving us $0.93, he gave us a full dollar back. This was frustrating and inconvenient. We don't plan on going back to...

On 4/8, I met a friend who was visiting from Los Angeles at Mar Azul for dinner. I had never been before, but she was staying on the east side and the menu looked good! Shortly after our food came out, the power went out in the restaurant. There was still some daylight out, but it was dark and it was clear that the staff had no idea what to do to manage the situation.

We didn't have cash on us to pay for the meal because we expected to pay in card, and their front doors clearly advertise that they accept multiple card types as payment. We asked to speak to several servers and managers about how we could pay, as language barrier was an issue. We offered Apple Pay, Zelle, Venmo, CashApp, etc and they denied having a business account they could accept payment to and declined to have us pay a server directly so they could cash out the tab themselves whenever the power came back on. We carefully explained multiple times that we had other plans, my friend's ride was already on the way, and that we could not sit around and wait for the power to come back with no guarantee of when that would happen. We were told AEP said it could be as long as 3 hours.

The only solution we were offered was to leave our licenses behind and "come back tomorrow" to pay the $50 bill and get them back. The next day was Easter Sunday, I live on the complete opposite side of Columbus, and my friend was flying back to California, so this was not an acceptable or reasonable ask. Their inability to accept card was not our fault and we them offered multiple other methods of pay. After 45 minutes of sitting in the dark trying to pay our bill, my friend's ride arrived and we got up from the table to say our goodbyes. We (two women) were IMMEDIATELY swarmed by four male staff who were literally shouting at us and (I presume) accusing us of trying to dine and dash, which was clearly not the case considering we'd just spent nearly an hour asking multiple employees how we could pay them so we could leave. Frankly, if the power goes out and your business is not prepared to assist customers in completing payment, good customer service would be accepting that the incident was nobody's fault and comping the meal, not demanding that they leave their license behind and break the law driving home without it. It's truly absurd that they made such a fuss over $50 for a meal we had to eat in the DARK.

Ultimately, I left my ID with them for 10 minutes to go to a nearby ATM and get cash out, which I do not believe I should have had to do. The front door clearly advertises that they accept card as payment, and the power outage was not an acceptable reason to demand cash payment from unsuspecting patrons because their readers went down through no fault of the customers. The customer service at this restaurant was the worst I've ever experienced by a landslide and I would NEVER recommend eating here. They will very literally hold you hostage in the dark if the power goes out and you aren't...

Went there for the first time today and was super excited! I’ve seen it every time I drove to work and was so beyond excited to go and finally try it when it opened. Honestly the appeal when you first walk in was like any other Mexican restaurant, nothing to complain about there. But let me tell you the booths are absolutely awful to sit in. They are so tight when you sit down and if you are anything over a stick size you cannot sit comfortably in them at all. The amount of leg room was so uncomfortable and I basically had the table sitting on my lap. Now onto the food, the chips and salsa to begin with did not taste good really at all. The chips tasted as if they had been sitting out for a couple of days and the salsa honestly tasted like marinara sauce, was super disappointed. So not a great beginning. We had ordered the Quesabirria, Texas Fajitas, a margarita flight, and a side of the street corn. The Quesobirria was such a dissatisfying meal. It comes with two quite small quesadillas with the birria meat inside (and the meat that I was given was basically all fat and not really any meat) with a side of the broth, cilantro, and onions (which did not taste good at all). Was super disappointing :/ The fajitas were decent and so was the street corn. Now to the margarita flight. They were super super sugary and honestly just tasted like you were drinking straight syrup. Not to mention they do not give you any prices on the alcohol menu what so ever so when the bill came it ended up costing $21.99 just for 4 little basically shot glasses of these drinks. For those 4 items that we had gotten it ended up costing little over $80!! It was honestly the biggest rip off I’ve ever had and I’ve never written a review for a restaurant ever in my life, but the experience at this place was just so bad I needed to let people know. Not to mention we had only seen our waiter probably 2 times in the entire visit we had there (which was probably about an hour or so). So I would NOT RECOMMEND spending your money here at all. Try another local place if you want good Mexican food at an affordable price!! Do not waste your time...