Viva Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Des Moines

I am extremely disappointed with today’s experience at this restaurant. We arrived around 8:20 or 8:30. My family and I were seated right away at a booth that seemed to be dirty, with water spilled on the floor. I asked to be moved to a different table, and there was no issue, so we switched tables. Next, we ordered our beverages and then our food. We devoured the chips and salsa and even got a second basket of chips because of how long the food was taking. We waited around 30 minutes, and by this point, we were a little concerned because our server hadn’t checked on us or our food at all. We looked around, hoping to catch someone’s attention, but the servers seemed to be eating at a table near the bar, and no one noticed us. Finally, we grabbed our server’s attention and asked him how much longer the food would take. His response was, “Oh… right… let me go check, because they usually take longer to cook orders when they’ve started closing down the kitchen and doing the cleaning.” He came back and said, “They haven’t even started making the food yet… and I can’t tell them anything because they get upset if we say something.” I was speechless at what we were just told. Keep in mind, we arrived around 8 pm, and they close at 10:30. What really left us shocked, though, is that we have never been treated this way at a restaurant before. As we looked around, we noticed other tables around us were getting much better service. People who came in after us were served promptly, while we were left waiting, ignored, and treated poorly. first and last time I go...

I hate leaving negative reviews but our experience this evening was not good. There were probably five other tables of four or five there while we were there in addition to our booth of four. The hostess was extremely kind and seated us right away. This is where things went downhill. Our server was unnecessarily rude the entire time we were there. He rushed us to order, walking away from the table before we could finish talking on two separate occasions. Several times when we were ordering our meal, he talked over my mother, to the point where she had to say she wasn’t finished talking yet. Our food came quickly but my order was wrong. Not a big deal, but we had to flag down another server to let them know. Our server came over and instead of just taking my plate back, which I had done nothing out cut open my food, he insisted that I had ordered chicken and not beef. I had to tell him multiple times that I didn’t order chicken before he offered to bring out the correct food. After bringing the correct food out, he rushed us to eat, coming over multiple times to ask if we were done yet when we were clearly still eating. I wish I could say this but was just an off night but this is not the first time we’ve gone and had poor or rude service when the restaurant was not remotely busy or understaffed. While the food is ok, I would recommend visiting another restaurant as there are many great options...

Love the patio and how can you beat $2 margs. Update 8/18 went for dinner, nice night love the patio. Margs now $3, still a good deal. Haven't been here in a few months. No familiar faces on the staff. Interesting??Took over 30 min to get our food. We ordered 2 meals and they came out 5 min apart, as did the table beside us. Seafood enchiladas, seafood was diced. Beef, chicken and shrimp fajitas worst I've had anywhere. Steak burnt on one side. Rice and bean plate was pitiful. Were there any shrimp? All was very oily and had little flavor. It should have never left the kitchen! Some of the meat were jerky like. Best part we paid, gave the server our credit card. He came back. Looked at our bill as walking to our table. Went back inside. Then came out looking all over the floor, yes for our card. Went back inside a couple minutes late her came out and returned our credit card. We said, you found it? He said it was inside. No apology. Really. Oh and I was up 8 hours later, food poisoning?? What happened to one of our favorites. We went a couple times a month. No more. 😪 my 5 stars rating is now a 1. ...