Casa Frida Mexican Cuisine — Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale

Both the indoor and small outdoor dining areas were pleasantly free of loud music. A real plus. We sat outside. The waiters were attentive and polite. The prices were fine for what was supposed to be freshly made food. The reasons for my rating being a 3 are as follows. To start, my two laminated menus felt greasy, so I got hand sanitizer from my car rather than go inside to wash my hands again. My dinner tasted OK, but it was not appealingly presented, and only one item was actually good, the black bean puree with some nice, grated farmer's cheese. One reason for only 3 stars was that the initials "MP", for market price, were on the two offerings of guacamole in the appetizer menu. Oddly, no other foods, for example seafood entrees, had MP on them. Maybe they were all frozen? The guacamole descriptions were a little confusing, a typical version and another with options of fruit, like peaches or pineapple, mixed in. We chose what was referred to as the regular guacamole by the waiter. My friend who had wanted to take me for dinner had eaten there before and so I did not want to ask the waiter what the market price was, since she seemed to know. Well, apparently $14 was not what it was on her prior visits. It pushed our dinner to over $100 after $17 of drinks, 2 entrées, a salad, the tax, and a $16.00 (20%) tip. I asked the waiter if perhaps they had billed us for TWO guacamoles, but he said no, it was $14 that day, and that avocados were very expensive. I'm afraid I replied, "Yes, a dollar!" before realizing it wasn't his fault. My friend said to the waiter that it must be lower at lunch. He said at lunch they offered it in a smaller amout for $6. I think she had simply been given that before, and did not know there was another size/price, since they are ... MP. Seriously, if the amount of guacamole it would take 1 to 2 small avocados to make at home is marked up to $14.00, I think waiters should mention that to customers who would never think a strip mall restaurant would charge that much for about 3/4 cup of guacamole. Living here, maybe I should have not been surprised, but I often feel bad for tourists dining out here. FYI, it WAS good guacamole, with a small amount of what seemed like house-made chips. Finally, and maybe I'm old, fussy and picky, but I'd like to suggest the owners ask people about their entrées when they see them barely touch them. $18 -$19 entrées should look freshly made and appealing. Gravy should not COVER a piece of fish and extend to the edges of the plate, as my friend's did. It's unappealing. I think carnitas shouldn't be wet, shredded, uniformly gray, and sitting in juice like they had been steamed from raw pork, not roasted. Carnitas are from roast pork and have been browned a little if roasted properly. I hope my suggestions help the cooks and owners take more care. Several minor details would have made it a 5 star review. The waiters, I should mention again, were all they should be. But they shouldn't have to pretend no one ever questioned the MP before. Let them tell the customers up...

I come here regularly as it’s close to home and has good food. It’s common that there are issues w food orders. And I don’t mean to go orders, I mean dining in orders. Food not ordered, forgotten or wrong item delivered. As I am in the food service biz for many years, I am very forgiving and still patronize CF. However, after tonight, I an unsure that I should continue.

We ordered a ground beef chimichanga (among other things), a pork chimichanga was delivered. It took about 15-20 minutes to get the incorrect chimichanga. I had to get up to track down the server in order to let her know we got the wrong food. She was very nice about it and took food back to get it corrected.

It took about another 20 minutes to get it corrected. That is abnormal as this type of situation should be made on the fly as me, the customer already waited for my dish the first time. I don’t say anything.

We go about eating, although at this point, we don’t even want the food because while waiting the 40 minutes we’ve now filled up on chips.

I request the bill, it comes w no consideration over what happened. Full price everything. No one addressed the situation verbally by coming to the table.

I comment to the server I am surprised by this, she says, I will ask my manager to discount. Returns and says the manager will not discount.

On my way out, I ask the server her name and the managers name. The reason I want their names is because as I said, I frequent CF and know the owner is usually there around the weekend. I wanted to point this out to him. She tells me her name, but then tells me there is no manager and the owner is off. So she can’t do anything and besides, she eventually brought me the correct food.

The craziest thing about all of this is the restaurant was virtually empty. Just no reason at all for this.

So, my advice to CF is you need to be more respectful of your customers time and you should always take responsibility for your errors. I hope you take this feedback and listen to it. I would like to return as a customer, but just can’t until I receive some sort of appropriate response...

I’ll start off by saying I eat out at least 4 nights a week and have dined at everything from dive bars to Michelin star rated restaurants. In addition to consistent quality food and service, I look at how the staff is treated by management/owners when reviewing restaurants.

At Casa Frida I started to become a regular based on the attributes stated above. I will say the owner was not the warmest but never rude. Sadly our recent visit turned me off where I will NEVER step foot in this establishment again. While our food was good, the service was terrible in terms of all our drinks were improperly made every round. I can chalk that up to having a hard time retaining or finding new staff (apparently the bartender was new).

What I’ll share next was the tipping point for me and is unacceptable behavior by an owner or management in my humble opinion. After receiving our bill I noticed two small changes for jalapeños to make our guacamole spicy and some extra pico de galo to go with our fajitas. I never expected to be charged for those since we asked for our guacamole to be spicy. It’s not that the charge was expensive ($5) but the fact that the entire experience was terrible and when brought to his attention he got defensive rather than acknowledge he might have been short staffed or backed up.

In front of the entire restaurant he blamed our server, who did nothing wrong other than try and deal within the a new and poorly trained bartender and a kitchen that was slower than molasses. I can see why his previous bartenders and servers left. If you have an issue with staff take it away from your customers.

There are a plethora of authentic Mexican restaurants in the area that offer a higher standard of hospitality. The owner should hire someone with people skills to run his place and stay in the kitchen and help cook. He has NO place being in front of customers.

I only offer you a glimpse into my experience in hopes that it may help others reading this review. After my experience I have noticed that I’m not the only reviewer who has had similar experiences with the owner. Good luck if you...