Casa Brava Authentic Mexican Cuisine — Restaurant in Marion

I remember we haven't eaten at Casa Brava because we weren't happy with the experience last time we were here, over 2 years ago. But time heals all wounds, they say, so we thought it was time to try again in our hopefully post-pandemic, brave new world.

Here's the good: I like some of the artwork on the wall and it's a colorful place. Also good on this visit: my meal of "Avacado Delight" tasted good and was pretty much as described: (avacado, bacon, chicken, steak, and cheese) although I did expect more avacado based on the name of the dish.

Unfortunately, the service for this visit was not great. It took awhile for a server to get to us, then some time for our food to come out. While my order was correct, the others for our table were not. One meal might have been mostly correct but was not prepared as described on the menu, missing some key ingredients, primary and ironically, avacado. The next meal was supposed to be fish tacos but they weren't tacos, and definitely not fish. We're not sure exactly what they were. The person delivering our meals from the kitchen didn't stick around for even seconds, literally... Definitely not long enough to hear any objections... Then we realized we didn't have any silverware. And suddenly, as if a great vortex swallowed them up all at once, there was a sudden shortage of wait staff... no servers in sight. After several minutes of staring at this food with no utensils, and no one to even flag down, I walked up to the host at the entrance and he got us some silverware. I also asked if he could find our server and send her to our table to straighten out our orders.

We never saw our server anytime soon and after awhile my family just decided to eat what was brought out. Eventually she came out near the end to check on us. We never got any drink refills.

We could have asked for a manager or demanded our order made right, but in this case, we simply decided to pay the bill and and leave. Perhaps they were short staffed... I'm hoping that was a factor, as that would at least be an understandable reason. On balance, I think a 3 star rating is fair enough, maybe a bit generous, since the food was generally good, but the service was subpar for this particular visit. Even good food isn't as good when it's not what you were expecting.

Maybe we just have bad luck here but 2 not-so-great visits in a row, over 2 years apart, means it will probably be awhile before we visit again. We hope you have a better experience, this was just ours. Also, I forgot to mention that the people here were generally pleasant, not rude, that was not an issue at all.

Still, I think the restaurant lives up to my own interpretation of it's namesake: brave house... By that I mean only brave souls...

FOOD POISONING!! Went there on 2/26/2020 at approx. 4pm and ordered a quesadilla. Around 8pm, my stomach started hurting and by 8:30pm, I was violently ill- throwing up (among other things). For the next 9 or so hours, I experienced the worst pain I have ever felt in my stomach. I lost count of the times I vomited. I could not even keep water down and because of this, I became severely dehydrated. I never was able to sleep and ended up going to the hospital the following morning where they gave me much needed fluids and pain and nausea medication. Samples were taken at the hospital and sure enough, I had FOOD POISONING! I had not eaten anything that day prior to eating at this restaurant other than a prepackaged stick of cheese and coffee earlier in the day. So thank you so much, Casa Brava, for giving me FOOD POISONING, making me miss work, and incurring what will be at least a COUPLE THOUSAND DOLLARS in hospital bills I will now owe because of your negligence and carelessness in properly cooking my meal. I will never eat...

got $60 worth of food last night, only to come home & realize they forgot the tortillas that literally was supposed to come with 1/2 of the meals i ordered. when i called back to ask them what they could do about it seeing as i didnt want to waste more gas & time by driving back up there to get what i shouldve already gotten, the person answering the phone acted like he was to incompetent to understand what was happening. when asking to speak to the manager, we asked if he could refund us just the tortillas prices & he basically said “sorry, nothing we can do.” AND HUNG UP ON ME. literally mid conversation. very unprofessional and very rude. there’s a reason it has a 2.5 star rating & it’s my fault for not having taken that seriously. wouldn’t recommend eating there as the meals were trash as well. felt like i was eating slime. $60 worth of food...