Acamaya — Restaurant in New Orleans

We love Latin American cuisine and fine dining so we were excited to try this place. While there were some very positive notes, overall I came away feeling like Acamaya is overhyped and not the kind of value I expect from New Orleans finer dining.

The Good: the tostadas (tuna and hamachi) were unique and amazing, almost as good as some I had at a Michelin nominated restaurant in Mexico City. We also loved the sweet potato. I was a big fan of the arroz negro with huitlacoche, although my boyfriend complained about there only being one shrimp and a few bites of tiny calamari. The swizzle cocktail was very interesting and a nice complement to the cuisine, as was the Chelada.

The Bad: Although the flavors of the octopus were outstanding, the tortillas served with them were cold and starting to get hard, and the portion wasn't really enough to split between the two tortillas anyway. The scallop ceviche was under seasoned and forgettable - I ended up squirting it with some lime from my margarita just to give it some flavor. These were also the two dishes I was looking forward to the most because I seek out good ceviche and octopus around the city. Huge disappointment. Also the $15 margarita was unbalanced and over salted - criminal to mess up such a simple drink at a restaurant of this caliber.

The Ugly: Our server didn't seem to care about our dining experience at all. I was dressed up for an event we had after dinner and had an evening bag -- there were no purse hooks or any way to hang it on my chair, and when I asked if there was somewhere to put it so it wouldn't have to sit on our small table with all the food, our server shrugged and said "the floor."

My boyfriend was convinced she didn't like that he was wearing a colorful T-shirt rather than something fancier -- he's a casual tech guy but usually tips 30% and is always very polite, so we didn't understand why she was so cold to us. I work in the service industry and have a lot of grace for servers, so it's a big deal for me to mention this.

In the end, our bill was over $200 and we couldn't help comparing that price point to the experiences we regularly have at Palm and Pine, Tito's Ceviche and Pisco, Costera, Cane and Table, etc. My boyfriend needed to eat again an hour later and we went to Paladar for reposado dirty martinis and two stunning crudos that made us laugh about the pretentious scallops and carrots from earlier.

At Acamaya we may have had some incredible bites of food, but our experience reminded us that sometimes hype...

I was asked on a date here and arrived a bit earlier than my date. I asked to sit at the bar (which was totally empty) while I waited for my date to get there. The host looked me up and down and told me that all of the seats at the bar were reserved, as well as all of the tables. I felt a bit put off by this, because the restaurant really didn’t seem that busy, but I ignored it and turned to go wait outside. My date arrived just a moment later. Suddenly, the second that he showed up, their entire attitude changed. I guess they DID have a table for us to sit at, and they quickly ushered us over to a table right in front of the bar.

I sat through this entire meal and did not see a single person sit at that bar.

The food was incredibly expensive and the portions were extremely small. When my $20 taco came out, it was just a tortilla made of overcooked cheese wrapped around one piece of shrimp with some overly acidic guacamole paste squeezed on top. It almost felt insulting. I could have made this at home, easily. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was so uninspired, so boring, such terrible service, that I was actually extremely embarrassed to be in there with a first date. I felt bad that this guy was about to pay over $100 for us to eat stoner munchies.

I didn’t really appreciate being treated like a prostitute by the extremely pretentious and unpleasant host, I didn’t appreciate the inherent misogyny in the way that his tone flipped around the second that a MAN was there to speak for me. I didn’t appreciate the lack of creativity or ingenuity in the menu, the insultingly greedy prices, or the wait staff who somehow treated us like we were lucky to be there.

We dressed really nicely for this meal and were polite the entire time. I would never recommend this place to...

Beginning to end, this was a perfect meal. Every single dish had something surprising and delightful about it, while still staying wonderfully grounded. (We had the hamachi, ceviche, octopus, sweet potato, and the market fish, which was grouper.) The tortillas alone were worth writing home about. I’ve had a lot of excellent food—and a lot of really excellent Mexican food—and this one is easily in my top meals ever.

Every detail is thought through. The space is gorgeous—the high tops have the best view of the open kitchen, btw—and the service was excellent. The hostess was gracious about our last minute reservation, and our main server, Amanda, gave genuine recommendations and took care of us in the very best sense of that phrase, and everyone else who came by our table was great.

There are only two desserts on the menu for a reason. We usually just split one, but everything had been so good that we got both, and it was the right choice.

If you prefer your food unseasoned or you think “tweezer food” is an insult—don’t go. This isn’t for you. There’s a Dave and Buster’s downtown that’ll suit you fine.

Otherwise: go...