Palacio Maya Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Independence

I don't normally post reviews but this place broke my heart today. Let me start woth the servers are always amazing. The last 4 times I've come here the food was 10/10 but today was so bad. Rancid bad. My husband and daughter got our dinner here tonight. He ordered the shrimp enchiladas and a tamale. I ordered carnitas as is my usual. When the food came we were both pretty shocked and I was taking my husband here to show off their food to begin with. Now I am Latina. I know how food should be cooked and I've had my share of good and bad mexican and tex mex. His enchiladas were basically canned sauce with a couple shrimp rolled in them. No seasoning. He couldn't eat the beans and this is a man I can compare to a dump truck for food. My carnitas came and at first I was shocked that the portion of meat was 1/4 what it usually was. Then I touched the meat. ROCK HARD. Like I called the server and clanked it on the table to prove how hard it was and it CLANKED. The server apologized and said the cook is new and will remake it. No big deal! She brings me the new food and at this point it's actually tender but it tasted... pickled??? It was SALTY. NO SPICE and to top it off there was a smell to it that I've smelled before and it was exactly like rancid lard (if you cook with lard you know and Latinos do all the time.) either the meat was going bad or the lard they cooked with was bad. I sampled my husbands tamale and the masa was RAW not to mentioned it was clearly not a true tamale. There is no way that was steamed in a corn husk. Plus they used the same canned sauce on it as they did on his enchiladas. The meat had no flavor. Just fatty ground beef. Worst tamale ever. My husband is a big guy and will eat anything and he felt sick after 3 bites trying to give it some credit. I happily tipped the wait staff because I know it wasn't them. But guys... that cook needs to go. I paid for basically chips and queso and my kids quesodilla which she had to add cheese from the dip into ontop of salt. Please guys I like this place. DO BETTER. the servers don't deserve to get the backlash from a microwave...

First experience for our party of three (Mother's Day). This is a disappointing review to give as we had really high hopes for this place. First of all, the environment/atmosphere was awesome! Clean, bright and very welcoming. We were greeted by a fantastic young hostess and asked for a seat on the patio. The tables have large umbrellas which provided a comfortable outdoor lunch. The chips arrived soon after and they were perfectly warm, light and crunchy! The salsa had good flavor, sans the stand of hair I found in my salsa. 🤢 I asked for a new bowl of salsa and it took some time to get. 1st ding on service. I also waited through 3/4 of my entire meal to get a refill on water and that wasn't until I set my enjoy glass on the corner of the table. That's the second and last ding on service. Friendliness of the staff deserves high marks. The food presentation was good when served. However, this is where things get weird. The plates came out, not warm or hot like typical Mexican places, but cold. Not surprisingly, the food was barely warm as well. The most disappoint aspect of our meals (beef tacos, enchiladas and chile rellenos) is that the beef in each item was lacking flavor and was quite bland. No hint of Mexican flavors. I must admit the guacamole salad served with #2 meal (chili rellenos/taco) was outstanding! Maybe the best ever. Another great thing we had were free desserts for the two moms in our group. The fried ice cream (big portion!) and the churros were delicious! Free desserts for Mom's on Mother's Day was a really nice surprise! Father's Day? Maybe we'll be back! There were alot of things to like about this restaurant and we'll probably give it another try. I'm hopeful that we were there on an off day or they begin adding more flavor to the beef, serve the food warm and make couple a more rounds checking for...

I am very dissapointed with today's visit. I am a frequent costumer here and every other visit, I've had a pleasant visit here. I went in to eat with my family today and the server was extremely rude. I requested a sauce for my shrimp but they took too long and used Valentina instead, (which I had no problem with). When the server came he placed it on the table rudely and when I told him I didn't want it anymore (in a normal tone) he snatched it from the table and left. The manager then came to the table who was EXTREMELY RUDE!!! and asked what the problem was. We were confused because there was no problem. She then very loudly said that we always return the food; which we had an incident where we brought up to the server that our fish was raw but we never returned our food, And that time we didn't make big deal about it, they were kind enough to take it all off our tab and we tipped our server $50. We were extremely confused as to why the team members were acting extremely rude with us. I'm only giving it 1 star because if I could, I would rate it 0. The manager should be fired, because that is no way to act towards guests. There was no professionalism from the manager nor server. Me nor my family will not...