Pamela's Restaurante Chileno — Restaurant in Florida

I wanted so much to love this restaurant especially since so many people have recommended it to me as a family gem! I came for lunch by myself since I was in the area and the place was absolutely packed. I told the hostess it was just me dining alone and proceeded to wait twenty minutes until I noticed that she was sitting others before me. I understand that larger parties should be seated at the larger tables but she seated two couples before me at a single table I could be placed at.

I finally was seated, handed a menu and some bread with salsa to munch on without ordering my drink. I didn't mind at the time though since I was so hungry and happily ate the Chilean bread----the salsa was delicious and had a nice bite to it. It became a problem when I waited 25 minutes at my table looking to put in my drink and lunch order. Finally, someone noticed me after trying to wave down multiple staff. I ordered the shrimp empanada (which I noticed everyone in the restaurant ordering these gigantic empanadas), the mariscos de crema (their menu is very seafood based), and the lomito (pork) sandwich.

It took another 28 minutes before I got my food at which point I was literally on the verge of leaving and packing up. I got the soup and sandwich at the same time then the empanada last. My soup wasn't ver warm which made me think it had been sitting out for sometime with my sandwich waiting for someone to deliver it to me! The soup had great flavor though and was the only star of my meal with an assortment of seafood in it. The empanada also had good flavor but there wasnt much shrimp in the filling and the dough was undercooked. The sandwich was just sad.....the thin piece of pork they used was pretty dry and became chewy so it was hard to bite into the sandwich. The only redeeming factor was the whopping amount of delicious avocado they used so I felt that I was essentially eating a vegetarian sandwich.

Maybe I caught them on an off day, I'm not sure what really happened considering all the rave reviews on here but I don't think I will be returning which is a shame since I don't know of many local Chilean...

Service very poor. Food okay. What really made me mad, was that they included 15% tip automatically. In our dining table we were only 3 people (I see this practice of adding a tip if the group is larger). What made it worst was that usually restaurants that do this, they put additional tip in their bill, as a suggestion if you want to tip more, that flags the consumer that the tip was already included. In addition they put at the end of the bill the suggested % of tip starting at 18%! With the total written with that additional tip! It makes one think that the tip was not included. Very deceiving. I did not realized this until I got home, therefore I gave a 33% tip! Something outrageous as the service was definitely extremely poor. I know it was a Friday early dinner (5PM) and the restaurant was full, but they had enough servers to have this as an excuse. Very unacceptable and I will not go again to this restaurant as I feel that their tipping practice is unethical. 15%for that poor service would have been enough. 33% tip, I would not have a problem tipping that amount if the service would have been excellent. Consumers be aware of this if you go to this restaurant, pay attention to the bill to see if they have...

I'm from California (Los Angeles) and we only have a couple of chilean restaurants there, so I was surprised to see one in Miami when I was on vacation. I was excited to check it out, the menu looked incredible. I wanted to try everything. Me and my friend ended up trying a couple of empanadas (delicious), a couple of different merluza plates (very good) and dessert (lucuma manjar, delicious). I had no problems with the food but the service was lacking. They didn't come to check me for some time while waiting to get a refill on my l drink, had to ask a different server to tell my server to get a drink. Then after getting dessert, they forgot about us again. Sat there waiting for service while I saw some of the waitresses chatting and messing around on the corner. After waiting a while and finally able to pay, I noticed that the 18% tip is already included (this is not something you see in Los Angeles). Well, the tip is for the quality of service they provide so if they impose that tip, there is no incentive to provide excellent service. Knowing this, I will definitely visit again but I will keep my expectations low when it comes...