Los Barriles Restaurant — Restaurant in Loíza

In December of 2024, while enjoying vacation time with loved ones in the San Juan area, we wanted to spend a “day at the beach” and decided to go to one on the north coast and east of the populated city area.

After swimming in the warm Caribbean waters, we decided to enjoy dinner in a bar & restaurant we passed while driving to the beach.

This review is about my experiences at the Los Barriles Restaurant.

Los Barriles means “the barrels”, which explains why the whiskey barrels are promptly displayed on their front sign.

This bar & restaurant is very versatile in its services and is located just off the main road and on the northern coastal shores of the beach.

Parking is tricky because their private lot is very small, but you can always park across the street or further down along the main roadside.

Although you are dining mere feet from the ocean, this beach is surrounded by a protective reef barrier. This means that it is more like a “confined pool” area and allows for “wading” in the water, as opposed to actual “swimming”. But this all makes for a breathtaking view to enjoy while dining-out at the exterior tables.

Speaking of dining-in, customers have various options to enjoy their meals. There is a grab-n-go shop at the front that is facing roadside. This is where you can find “quick bites” like bacailitos, alcapurrias, tostones and more, all visible behind a glass counter.

Next, you can walk in and sit at their bar-counter area, which also has televisions for watching sports.

Then, there are 2 interior dining areas with huge table seating, making them perfect for large groups of friends or family; one is on an upper-deck and is close to a stage platform. I imagine that when they have live band music, folks get up and dance in the ample space in the same area. This makes great for celebrations.

Finally, there is exterior table seating that allows for groups of 4 to have a panoramic view of the beach and shoreline, only separated by a paved path that runs along the coast.

Los Barrilles Restaurant has delicious seafood and traditional Puerto Rican dishes that were reasonably priced, considering the ocean view.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Mofongo con Chicharrones de Pollo and tostones. My relatives enjoyed their pescado (fish) with rice & beans and Mofongo.

Food flavoring was on-point, portion size was good and textures were great.

Now for the negatives. The two major factors that hurt our dining experience was their service and their bathrooms.

As many reviews have stated, their service is lacking. When we first sat down, we were greeted by a man who was friendly, bilingual and helped to answer our inquiries about the menu. The problem is that after we got our menus, he disappeared and didn’t return until about 20 minutes later… Typically, your waiter will give you menus and take drink orders or give you water. This wasn’t the case here. So the service wasn’t necessarily “rude”, it was simply lacking and very untimely.

I ended up searching for our waiting to let him know that we were ready to place our orders.

After this encounter, it was almost as if they didn’t want us to pay either, because they hadn’t come to check on us WHILE eating. We COULD have easily just walked away after enjoying our lovely meal. Makes me wonder if this is an issue for them?

As for the bathroom, I didn’t have to use the men’s, but I was told that the ladies restroom was filthy, had no paper towels, issues flushing the toilet and there was no running water from the sink to wash your hands.

All things considered, Los Barriles Restaurant was a good experience overall. The prices, the flavors, the portions and the views made it all worthwhile.

But I recommend carrying baby wipes (at all times) and don’t be afraid to demand better service...

We didn't get seating right away even though there were plenty of empty tables. We seated ourselves and had to ask different employees for our waiter. When he finally showed up, we asked for a little time to look over the menus. After for about 10-15 mins, we had to get up again to look for him. We placed our oders. I wanted to make sure the red snapper didn't come out overcooked, again, I have to get up and look for our waiter. When I requested how I wanted the fish, he told me to go instruct the cook. I then proceeded to go to the kitchen area and wait to speak to the cook. Btw, the fish still came out dry but I decided not to return it. My sister ordered a "bacalaito. It came burnt. I had to request to take it off the tab because the waiter did not offer to remove it. During our meal, we had to get up about 7 times to look for our waiter. When he wasn't busy at the bar, he was sitting at a table talking to others and on his cell phone. He was not attentive to us for most of the time we were there. He didn't bring my mom's or dad's drink with the meal(they are 97 yrs old). Once again we had to get up from our table to get their drinks ourselves. My husband had to get up and get my sister's drink also. It was the most stressful luncheon we have ever had. I went to the bathroom and there was no toilet paper. We received the toilet paper an hour later. Finally, at the end, we again had to get up and find out waiter to pay for our meal. The waiter charged us twice. They had to give us cash back after paying with a credit card. When we tried to find the owner to point out how bad the service was, he wasn't around. They gave me his number. I called Miguel, the owner, after we got home, explained everything. He said without a picture of the waiter on the phone, he couldn't confront him. I explained how disappointing the experience was and did let him know that we were going to give a negative review because we had to be honest. He got mad, sent me to hell and hung up on a customer. We will never go back there again. I would caution people to choose a different place when...

Decided to stop by and grab some food with my boyfriend, first of all they had us waiting there for a good time and we had to look for the waitress to ask if we could be sat. Food was very good, we got Arroz con pollo (rice with chicken) and Steak with fries. We also got some drinks, the only bad side of all this was the service. The lady looked like she didn’t want to be there at all , forgot about our drinks( it took 20-30 minutes to get one coke and one medalla), did not check on us one single time,and when we ordered a margarita towards the end we let her know that we didn’t like it because it tasted very sweet, it literally tasted like straight lemon juice, and politely asked her if it would be possible to return it since we had only take two sips of it,she just said there’s nothing she could do and that we had to pay for it regardless that it’s not her fault but the bar’s, she didn’t even try to look for a solution or help us out nothing. It’s important to mention that at the time we were there the restaurant was pretty much empty, there might have been only two other tables and the waitress was either nowhere to be found or sitting in a table using her phone. So at the end we ended up paying for something we didn’t even consume and no effort to help out was shown from her part at all. And she still had the audacity to ask us for tip! I work in the service industry so I know better than most people the importance of giving good tip but also to provide and deliver good service as well !! And unfortunately this establishment did not do it. Good food but not recommended at all if you’re looking for...