Temazcal Tequila Cantina — Restaurant in Dedham

Last night, a group of about 9 went here to celebrate a 21st birthday. We purposely picked this place to avoid the post-marathon crowds in Boston and for its large tequila list. The birthday girl called ahead to get a table, stating it was her 21st birthday.

We arrive at 8 for our reservation and the table isn't ready yet. Normally this is totally fine, but the restaurant was pretty dead considering it was a Monday night. We get seated after 5 minutes of waiting and go to order our drinks.

Our waitress ends up taking licenses for everyone in the group born in '97 or later or have an out of state ID to bring to the manager in the back. This was a little strange, and I've never seen this happen at a restaurant before, but seemed they were trying to be overly cautious.

The manager came out and told the birthday girl that they couldn't serve her. This was because she had a vertical license, even though it wasn't expired. The manager seems like they haven't managed a restaurant before - we thought we were missing a license, to which I had to assertively and directly ask him to go find it. Granted we did receive the license back originally, a manager should be quick to right this type of situation, especially when it pertains to legal documentation.

This place already has had 2 under 21 alcohol violations and they are at risk for losing their liquor license. I'm not sure how having a vertical license makes any difference - I would bet most fake licenses are horizontal and don't show that someone is exactly 21. I would avoid this restaurant, especially for anyone with out of state license or if you're not over 24/25. Why the person taking the reservation didn't alert us to the potential issue is besides me. This restaurant needs to up their communication around this issue to avoid losing forever customers (our entire friend group).

We happily took our business to the yard house, which was a lot more crowded (should've been telling). Had we stayed, temazcal would've made over $300, which they could've used to buy an ID scanner. Without an ID scanner, I can't see them lasting much longer, especially under the current manager. They are going to have to turn down a ton of potential customers to a restaurant that is already likely not the restaurant most legacy place goers would...

My girlfriend and I had dinner at the Dedham Temazcal on National Margarita Day (Feb 22). The only thing keeping this review from being 1 star is two prior visits that were mostly enjoyable. I’m not sure every heart pounding detail of our disastrous dinner is worth sharing on this forum. One brief anecdote regarding our drink order sums the evening up pretty well though.

We arrived early for an evening reservation and were relieved to be seated (in the main level dining room) a few minutes ahead of schedule. After waiting for upwards of ten minutes, our server acknowledged us and shortly afterwards returned to the table to take our drink order as though all was well. We put a round of drinks in immediately and then waited. And waited, and waited and waited some more. Finally our server made an appearance to let us know that the restaurant was short on margarita glasses and our drinks would be out as soon as there were clean glasses available. A full 43 minutes after we sat down, our drinks arrived at the table. At this point it probably won’t come as a surprise that one of the two drinks was very clearly made incorrectly. Rather than a sincere apology, or really any apology, our server became defensive and attempted to blame a mistake in the menu description. She did eventually comp the drink and bring a replacement. Suffice to say, it was downhill from there though.

Having worked in the food service industry for years, I’m well aware that these nights happen. The demands of a packed house can easily overwhelm the most experienced floor staff. Dishes do run out at the worst possible time. In my experience though, solid management and a floor staff that works as a team to pull everything together can mitigate almost all these problems. On this night, Temazcal clearly had neither

I may go back to Temazcal eventually (the one in Framingham is great, for the record), but it will be a LONG LONG time before I visit the Dedham...

I’m giving them a 2 star because I believe in second chances and might reconsider them in the future but my experience was not good at all. Our waitress sucked! She came to our table after what seems to be ages, never stated her name and never brought water until we politely asked her. She told us she is going to get our drinks but sat in a little room next to our table and was playing in her phone for like 15min. Meanwhile, my guests and I were looking at her in disbelief. When we finally got our drinks and meal, mine was a little burnt - which didn’t bother me that much but my dish was so spicy that I couldn’t even eat it. When I mentioned it to the waitress, her response was “well, all our dishes are spicy”. WHAT!!!! I’ve never seen someone so bad with customer service. She never offered to give me something else or bring management to the table. She pretty much just brushed it off and went back to that little room on her phone. Only one of my guests finished his meal, everyone else barely touched their plate. There’s spicy and there’s inedible spicy, that was it! When it was time to pay, she just split the bill without even asking us if that’s what we wanted. And off course took her dear time by spending 10min on her phone before bringing the check, after dropping the check on the table, then coming back to take our cards, and then bringing our receipt back. All the time never communicating with us. That was by far the worst customer service I received! Maybe it was that one waitress but since the food and drink weren’t great either, I don’t see me recommending this place to anyone. I should of read the other reviews because many people mentioned the slow and sloppy service at this place. You cannot be at Legacy Place and offering D-...