Nomad Taqueria + Beer Garden — Restaurant in Golden

Had dinner on new years eve 2018, had to enter the retaurant to ask if we seat ourselves, because after 5 minutes of standing at the host stand nobody had acknowledged us. Found a seat in the near empty dining room, and had half a bottle of water and two glasses filled, which later discovered had yet to been bussed from a previous table. Server left us with menus and took no drink order. He returned 7-8 minutes later for a drink order. I ordered the reposado old fashioned, reposado the operative part of the drink. He returned 10 minutes later to ask if it was supposed to be a tequila old fashioned, which should have been implied by the reposado. Not so bad at this point. Returns with the drink and takes our order; pozolé, three tacos, carne asada. Twenty five minutes pass and the food comes out, cocktail finished. Drops food with no flatware, returns with flatware and a spoon for the pozolé, immediately leaves without another cocktail or drink order. The carne asada was cooked to midwell, had a layer of char so thick that the “marinated” steak was almost unpalatable, under done luke warm potatoes and missing its corn slaw. The chicken tinga was also luke warm and fairly dry, and had zero cilantro, the shrimp taco had a breading on the shrimp that was soggy at best. The pozolè was so overspiced that it was inedible. After being finished with our subpar meal for well over thirty minutes, the server returned and asked how everything was. At this point we just wanted to finish up, so we ordered one more drink and some churros to go. The server returned to tell me the beer i had ordered was out of stock, mind you i did not order a beer. Once he corrected this he returned with a drink, went to the kitchen and returned with our togo churros and no check. The churros being to go should have implied that we were quite finished but apparently that didnt send the message home. After thirty more minutes of waiting for our check and the server walking by a number of times, all while apologizing to the other tables that they were “short staffed” ( the man had 8 heads in his section by my count) i finally flagged him down for the check. After returning with no check and an order of churros we had already recieved ( undercooked no less) he proceeded to ask what we had ordered since he had “ all his tables mixed up”. Finally the check came so we could leave what was hands down the most disappointing experience with food Ive ever had. In addition to this, i overheard multiple tables complaining about service, and at least three times saw a beardy redhead cook make his way back and forth to the bar with fresh pints of beer back to the kitchen while people were complaining about ticket times of food. I have never been made so sad by food, and ive eaten at Del Taco, which is by far a better decision for your wallet, pallet, and emotional wellbeing. -5/5 stars, disappointing for such nice atmosphere. Would have made a scene but i figured my girlfriend would have been angry and overall morale seemed to be null. Whoever the GM on for the night was, should be very disappointed, though by the general lawlessness of the night, I would guess there was no managment on duty. If there was , wholehearted shame all around. Suggestion for a New Year Resolution: the exact opposite of...

Pros: Unique location, fun idea, nice menu selection, good drinks Cons: Horribly slow service, dirty sticky tables, no sun shade on patio, mediocre food

We tried to enjoy a lunch at Nomad Taqueria on our way to the mountains and our first snag was actually finding the restaurant. The only sign we saw from the parking lot said 'ROCKS' so we assumed that was the name of the restaurant. Luckily for Google maps, we realized that that was the restaurant we were seeking which happened to be inside a hotel. My point in sharing this is that the signage for this restaurant was very difficult to see it was small and blended in with the wall. Unless we knew what we were looking for, there is no way we would have found the place without our gps.

More details: The entrance for the restaurant was also unclear. We ended up walking through the hotel lobby and waited there for a while before we saw a bar and realized that that was where we needed to wait to be seated. We waited a minute or two at the bar while the bartender was busy serving drinks to the people at the bar. We looked around for any other workers to help us and saw no one. The line for drinks was long so we walked past them to become more visible to the one employee that we saw, the bartender, to see us and help us next. When she did look up to see us, she told us to sit anywhere. So we did. We chose to sit on the patio because aside from the bar area the restaurant was a ghost town. No other guests or workers inside. We did see a couple of other tables of guests outside so we thought that was the better choice. There was no shaded areas however and we ended up sitting in the direct sun and getting burned over the course of our time here. It would have been great to have a few umbrellas outside to sit beneath.

All of the tables outside were either filled with dirty glasses or just were dirty and unwiped from previous guests. Super gross but we picked a table that looked the least bit gross. Nobody came to greet us, give us menus, or clean our table for probably five minutes. So, one of the people in our party got up to look for someone. He did not find anyone but he did come back with a paper towel to wipe our table, so we tried cleaning it ourselves. It was gross.

Finally a sleepy looking guy came to us and asked us if we had any questions. We asked for menus, water, and a clean rag to wipe our table. We were told to pull up the menu via the faded QR code that was on the table. (Big pet peeve of mine, but I digress...) And then he sauntered away.

I'm getting tired of recounting this experience so I'll just say the rest of our time there was a pendulum of waiting for our sloth waiter to come back with food and drinks fresh water and finally our bill or just waiting around looking for him. It was miserable. The good thing was the drinks we ordered did taste good. We would have ordered more had he come back to ask us if we wanted any more. He never did.

We will not be returning to this place. They seem unable to handle customers by providing service and a clean place to dine. If you're in the area, I'd say head across the parking lot to the gas station and grab snacks to go and enjoy in our car. Don't waste your...

Not good.

We came in a little before noon on a Friday and it was dead when we arrived. The bartender was polite, friendly and made good recommendations but that’s about where the positives end.

I ordered a “spicy” Mexican hot chocolate which had the consitency of slimy mud. It was hard to drink and the heat was almost nonexistent even though the bartender had warned me of the spice and I told him I was a fan of spicy cocktails. I didn’t finish it.

We ordered the tlayuda to start which is like a giant uncut tortilla with toppings. The kitchen forgot the meat (which it comes with, this wasn’t even an extra) but fortunately the bartender was quick to notice and correct. It was really sloppy and hard to eat though, picture something you’d make in a dorm room at 3am. The flavor was very bland; undercooked beans, practically unseasoned meat, cold cheese, sour cream, avocado... It really needed more of the pickled onions or lime, some kind of acidity to contrast all the fat.

Our bartender became pretty busy as the lunch crowd rolled in, there were soon a dozen or more people and he was serving all of them, making drinks and running the food. He could have obviously used a hand. There was another woman wandering around not helping him though. I finally got her attention and asked for some salsa (or anything with flavor really) and a steak knife in order to to eat the appetizer. She was very unfriendly and cold to our request and uninterested in our concerns. She offered to replace it with something else but I figured our tacos would be out soon so what’s the point?

It took what felt like forever for her to return with salsa, our food was now cold. And of course she was walking right behind our tacos when she finally brought it out, no knife. I’m not sure why in a place that was nowhere near busy she took so long to bring a 1oz portion of salsa and still forgot a knife. Maybe they made it fresh just for us? The bartender was working hard but she seemed unsupportive and bored. When he brought the tacos out I told the bartender that we didn’t enjoy the appetizer and didn’t intended to eat anymore of if and he rightfully took it off our bill.

The tacos were okay. The cactus was very good, the barbacoa was made with short ribs so it had a good natural flavor but lacked seasoning and the pork one was over cooked and tacky in texture. The portions aren’t very big but we’re still $12 for 3 tacos on their lunch menu. We left still hungry unfortunately.

Apparently they’ve been open for 7 months +/- but still have some issues to work out. Seems like the management on duty during our visit was really lacking. I was expecting much more from the location and prices ($50+ for 2 drinks and 6 tacos at lunch isn’t going to bring in the locals) and was...