Teocali Mexican Restaurant & Cantina — Restaurant in Kansas City

The wonders and amazements just keep on coming. I know this current situation has changed some things and we need to be more understanding. Keeping that in mind, I still can't give this place a pass.

Light on time? This place had tools to make the best of a tough situation and failed on every single front. They put out the fire on the boat by sinking it.

We called our order in ahead of time. Got there and a line was already forming for pickup. I guess at this point no one was coming to the window and someone who had already been waiting had to go inside and get their attention. Meanwhile outside a delivery driver who was waiting for a few orders started yelling into the window. Already not looking good.

It didn't get any better. The owner stepped out from in back to tell someone to get back and that's the last time we saw him come out from the back. He hid in the back the rest of the time leaving one server to run food, run checks, and generally work the window.

Meanwhile, at any given time, I could count an extra 5-6 people minimum sitting around in the front of the house drinking beer and staring back outside laughing. Mind you, customers are relegated to standing outside in a line that was growing. So this leaves the customers outside to believe that these people are somehow connected to the restaurant and just being a-holes leaving only one person working front of the house while they drink. Any way you slice it under the current situation, those people should not have been in there where we could see them or they should have been helping out.

To add to the frustration, they have DJs blasting music from the balcony on the second floor. The DJs were oblivious to what was going on below them and overpowering any conversation going on close to the building including at the window. If you wanted to talk to the server, you had to yell while standing right at the window. The server could not be heard at all when she was finally able to try to call out orders that were stacking up behind her. You could tell the DJs were oblivious because they would keep taunting us that we weren't being very fun down below. No. No we weren't. Gee, I wonder why.

On top of this, they were rushing orders out too fast and not paying attention to the tickets. Orders were coming out wrong or partial. I watched one delivery driver return what parts he had and tell them he was cancelling all the orders he had and would get for the place. I finally had to ask for a refund on my food.

So if you're the owner or know the owner, here's some stuff that could have been done differently and helped a little:

First, use the DJs to help. Figure out a way to have them call out the orders ready for pick up and give some guidance. Instead of being up there making the whole situation worse. And if people can't talk to each other at the window without being in each other's faces and yelling, you are not helping in the time of social distancing.

Second, got a bunch of people standing around inside not doing anything? Put them to work running orders from the back to the front. Have them run payments. Have them go outside and check on the crowd. Are the people in line there to pick up orders? Place orders? Send them out to help instead of sitting there laughing watch the ship sink. If these people aren't able to do that, as in they don't actually work there, then get them out of sight. You have two other floors they could be out of the way so you can have capable people in there helping out instead.

Third, slow down and check orders before they even go out. Seriously. Read the ticket and look at the order. Does the ticket say there shouldn't be anything green in the box? Then there shouldn't be anything green in the box. Refix it. (Because the person asking for a certain ingredient might be allergic.)

Last, if someone is going to float from front of the house to the back of the house, it should be the owner. That way they know just how bad the situation is. This wasn't the...

This place came highly recommended to me so I had been wanting to try it for a while. Anyway, went to try it tonight. Ordered the cucumber and jalepeno marg, which turns out is just their house marg shaken with cucumber and jalapeño, plus $3. Couldn't taste either. Bartender asks me if I want chips and salsa (without handing me a menu) and I say yes, assuming thats normal practice. It tastes alright and we order the shrimp, steak and chicken fajitas. They come out and its like a bunch of food thats been pan cooked and thrown on a platter. If you've had fajitas at any decent mexican spot, they always come out sizzling from being cooked on the skillet they come out on. Not these. It seemed like the chicken you get out of the bag from a grocery story. Tasted just okay. But we had also ordered two grilled jalapeños on the side, those didn't come. I was done eating by the time they brought just one out, not the two, as requested. Rice was the most basic mexican rice…just nothing felt authentic. Ive been told by friends this was an upscale, “boujie” Mexican spot, but it missed the mark completely for me. I had to return the first margarita bc i couldn't taste a lick of tequila, so I ordered the skinny, which tasted better. By the end of my meal, my stomach was so upset that I vomited. I assume from the overuse of the sweet and sour mix. From a spot thats supposed to be highly recommended “mexican cuisine”, not one single drink was hand crafted. I really expected more. It also seemed like the employees were more interested in closing down the restaurant than serving us, which closing wasnt for another hour plus. Oh and when the bill came, I was charged 2.50 for chips and 1/4 c of salsa, which I was unaware that costed, because I had to ask for a food menu after she already delivered the salsa. This is the most disappointing $50 I've ever spent. Save your money and go to taco bell or if you actually want upscale mexican, go to zocalo...

I’ve never been so disappointed with a restaurant than I was with Teocali. I chose to have my 40th birthday dinner here. Big mistake. I called ahead and reserved a table for 8 at 6:30. I arrived at 6:25. The server looked like she had no idea that they had a reservation at this time. She put some tables together and as she sat me I said, “There will be 8 others arriving soon. Please just bring waters out for now” she brought me a water 10 minutes later. Didn’t take my drink order until 7:00pm, didn’t get my drink until 7:20. At that time others ordered drinks which took about 15 min to get. We had to flag down people for every single thing we needed. When we finally caught someone’s attention we rushed through the menu to order our food because we knew no one would be back for a while. I told them upon arrival that we needed to leave by 8:15 to get to another place that I had made reservations at. At 8:16 I got a servers attention to tell them we needed to leave. She said our food was being plated. I told her that we had to go and no one wanted their food. We didn’t have time to wait and most definitely didn’t want Mexican food in our cars for 3 hours. They argued with the entire table and said, “It’s Friday night, you should expect us to be busy” it was Saturday night! There were 3 servers and someone bussing the tables. Very manageable for the amount of patrons that were there. They threatened to call the owner. Honestly wish they would’ve. This was a terrible experience! And put a real dent in the night....