K-Rico Mexican Grill — Restaurant in Naples

This place sounds great in theory, but must cater to clientele who have never previously tried Mexican food. Tex Mex or even Mex this is not. No offense to the Brits, but this is what I imagine British food stereotypically tastes like with minimal seasoning or flavor. See below for details.

Food - Ordered vegetarian tacos, kids quesadilla with rice, mushroom quesadillas, and cauliflower tacos. Ordered chips and the salsa flight with guac as an appetizer, which is not complimentary (already raising suspicion). Let's start with the chips and salsa. The chips were good, but the 3 salsas were uninspired to say the least. We would have been better off bringing our own Tostitos salsa from Walmart than eating this unsalted, somewhat sweet, extremely bland offering that we paid extra for. The guac was fresh, but tasted more like plain avocado than actual guac.

As for the entrees, they screwed up the veggie taco order and we had to send the plate back due to an erroneous order (bean instead of tofu taco). This can happen. But they inexplicably served our son's quesadilla with barely melted cheese (just a tortilla with folded shredded cheese inside) as well, which is baffling. We sent this back to be actually cooked like a quesadilla. More shamelessly, the white rice that accompanied his quesadillas was literally plain rice that someone likely took out of what I can only presume is an instant pot in the back. There was no salt, seasoning, spice, color, or flavor of any kind. The cauliflower tacos were also undercooked (imagine eating raw cauliflower). The only redeeming entree was the mushroom quesadillas, which were warm, crispy, and decently flavored, although again with no hint of spice or attempts to add flavor.

Dessert - Tres leches was solid, and the flan was decent. Good effort here.

Service - Disinterested and somewhat inattentive. We had to ask her for a spoon a few times, even though we saw her chilling in the restaurant not doing anything during our meal. We had to ask for water and menus to be brought to the table as well.

Parking - Very convenient right in front the restaurant, perhaps because others already knew what a mediocre place this was.

Availability - Tables galore inside the restaurant. I was asked to make a reservation, but not needed whatsoever for a party of 9 on a Friday night.

Verdict: If you are looking for G-rated, unflavored Mexican food, this is your spot. Otherwise, hit up Taco Bell for your meal and come back here...

Had an early dinner with my son. We have been selecting a different (new to us) restaurant each week to try and this one he picked because he wanted Nachos.

The order of things we liked:

Churros - dessert first?! As far as our favorites it was! Very good with Caramel and Raspberry sauce.

Corn Bread. buttery and sweet - came with hot sauce if you wanted to add spice.

Juanchitos Tamales - SO GOOD. Doesnt come with sauce because it doesnt need it. I've had his brisket tamales before but this time ordered the Jalapeno/Cheese. It has Jalapeños- so it was spicy.

Street Taco with Ground Beef - Joseph ordered this and it was decent sized and a lot of ground beef. He said that when we come back he wants to order it again.

Empanadas - they were good. Maybe we were just getting full at that point. But glad we tried.

Nachos - also good. We had with Chicken and was very generous with the toppings. It's near the end of our list but by no means was it disappointing. Easily could share with 4+ people!

Cheese dip - this was okay. I'm not sure what it was missing but we have had better.

To wrap it up, Kelly M was our server and was excellent. We loved her Corgi socks and she was helpful and patient while we were navigating our experience.

For everything we ordered and our two drinks, and take home boxes with enough for lunch tomorrow plus some... we spent about $100 including tip. For this area, that is very reasonable.

Some side notes - theres plenty of room for bigger parties. The bar and outside overlook the water. And the bathrooms were nice and clean.

Good...

The food was absolutely phenomenal but the service was terrible unfortunately. We got sat and no one came over to the table for 20 minutes. We had to ask the bartender for help. What made it worse was the fact that the restaurant was almost empty. Our server finally came over about 40 minutes later and blamed the hostess for not knowing we were there. At that point the bartender Kelly was doing everything. The 2nd time the server came over he offered free dessert and was laughing, which nothing was funny at that point. Well we weren’t surprised when we didn’t even get asked if we wanted dessert and we just wanted to leave. So our servers 3rd appearance I gave him my card because it was insulting at this point. Then we’re getting up to leave and he comes over to make small talk with us. At that point he should’ve just never of come back. We were treated terribly. The restaurant wasn’t busy, he had tons of time to talk to his coworkers at the computers and had no issues talking to the group of young good looking women at his other table. There was a food runner, a busser and the bartender was running the drinks and other servers with a total of 8 tables in the entire restaurant. There is absolutely ZERO excuse why our server did such a poor job. Kelly the bartender saved the night. But as awesome as the food was the way we were treated or lack there of we won’t be...