Mez Contemporary Mexican — Restaurant in Durham

Many businesses are raising prices or tightening their belts, but it seems like Mez is doing both. Compared to my visit a year ago, I was pretty disappointed. I found the food to be lacking compared to my past visits and the bill to be quite a bit steeper.

APPS: First, no chips and salsa for free. I know MEZ is trying to be fancy, but it's pretty common for mexican restaurants to offer complimentary chips and salsa. But it seems like this has changed since my last visit -- chips and salsa is now $7 for normal tortilla chips and salsa. You get three types of salsa however: regular salsa, salsa verde, and corn salsa. Nothing crazy.. it's free down the street at Moe's, but it's $7 here.

We ordered a Caesar salad to share. The salad came with Romain lettuce leaves stacked and completely unchopped. Some dressing and red onion slices to the side. It kind of felt like the presentation was aiming to put forth the least effort possible.

ENTRES: The carnitas tacos and the pollo enchiladas, were also a letdown. The meat in both were dry and the meal overall lacked flavor. I remember really liking the black beans served in the past, but the black beans tasted very flavorless (canned?). The tortillas were very cold and pretty clearly your run-of-the-mill store-bought.

AMBIANCE: Mez seats a lot of guests and is really spacious. It's pretty. A lot of "tables in hallways". This place could really do with some booth seating. The music system was pretty tinny and overall kind of annoying. I only point this out because there is a giant sign outside saying "MEZ is OPEN", which I thought maybe there has been some renovations or new management.. but only the food has changed.

PRICE: it was close to $70 for two lackluster entres, chips and salsa and a disappointing salad.

Summary: the creativity of a Chuy's with the quality of a Taco Bell for a higher price. There's a Moe's opening on the same street that's probably a better deal. Hopefully MEZ finds it's footing soon, they've got...

The customer service that we received was absolutely horrible. Which is hard for me to write bc I actually like eating at this place. I decided to take my assistant manager out to this restaurant to treat her for working hard with my company customer service. While her food was cold. We could not find the waitress and stood up and one of the waiters or manager (couldn’t catch his name) abruptly stares at us and says “do you need something” the look that he gave me was just not welcoming. I then stated “her food is cold” he then comes to our table and stated “I have never had to take food back here as long as I’ve been here.” This should’nt have been said to a regular customer. Again I eat here all the time and I invite plenty guests here as well. We then speak to the waitress who was nice to us however she quickly took our plates speeding us to leave. I will not be back to the place not because of the food bc it’s great. However because of the service we received. I will also be calling to speak with the general manager of this restaurant only because as a general manager myself, customer service should always be equally given. You never know who you’re treating. Being kind is so hard to come by these days in customer service. And for me to spend minutes to write this proves that this was unacceptable. We paid for our bill and left after we express to the waitress that everything was great AFTER we received our food and WE apologized if we caused any inconvenience for them to warm the food. She literally walks away as we both are telling her thank you for your service. Just wasn’t what I was expecting. I don’t want any free food, just want your managers to know that being kind and nice goes a long...

Came here on a Sat. night with a party of 4 without reservations and we had to wait about 30 min before getting seated. Granted there were quite a bit of tables open. I suspect that they are just understaffed. Entire staff was courteous.

One thing that was a little odd, they don't serve complimentary chips with salsa or just chips alone. I'm pretty sure that every restaurant that I've been to that looks of this caliber serves bread or some substitution of it. These are places at huge food capitals of the nation, CA and NYC where there is even more competition than here.

I had the Arroz con camaron. Overall it was a decent dish with several imperfections. There was some heat to it but it definitely wasn't evenly mixed throughout. Maybe they just put the salsa on one side of the dish and I was supposed to mix it but it felt like the dish was a "mixed" dish to begin with. They do give enough pieces of overcooked pealed shrimps. I thought the lime butter was a good idea but it really overpowered the dish and every bite was too sour. Not enough balance to it. The corn was fine but I think if they added in sliced street corn, it may offer some balance to the dish. There is definitely room for improvement in becoming an excellent dish.

The hibiscus tea was great and it includes a refill which our waiter automatically brought. I was surprised that I did not even have to ask for it.

I'll have to explore the area more but overall a decent restaurant but definitely missed the mark.

Disclaimer: only visiting this area for the week for a conference but I thought Page Road Grill was better...