AVO TACO — Restaurant in New York

So much to say so please stay with me - First off, I'm writing this not to bring down a new restaurant in the neighborhood, but rather to alert the owners to the frustrations that the patrons may feel. If they choose to ignore, well, this place will not last but I hope it does..To start, my party of 4 arrived at 6:30pm on Saturday night. The place was packed with people waiting outside. We put our name on the list and were told of a 35-40 minutes wait. Fine. We went to the bar and the great news is - the bartender and his drinks were stellar! If we come back it will be because everyone in my party agreed that we had some of the best drinks they can remember in a while. Now fast forward to 45 minutes later....I approach the host to follow up on when we may be seated, when he notified me that we were to be seated next. 15 minutes later...There were two empty tables of 4 for the past 10 minutes, so I walk back up to the host and he said "you should have been seated by now." I am going to pause for a second to also address the other people waiting for the other empty tables - why is no one moving people to tables as soon as they're clear?? Once we sit it's all downhill and we realized we should have stayed at the bar. We are told to scan the barcode and order from our phones. Wouldn't I have just stayed home and ordered from grub hub if I wanted to do that? If the owners did any research on the location where they put up shop they'd realize the residents of Bay Terrace due to the age range, will take issue with this. I also need to point out that at this point it's 7:30pm (an hour after we arrived) and a large part of the already limited menu on my phone is not available and reading "out of stock." Thinking this has to be a glitch, I reach out to a staff person asking if this was accurate, and they told me yes. All the bowl dishes weren't available because they ran out of rice. Owners, managers - it's 7:30pm on a Saturday. and rice a major necessity for a Mexican restaurant. After going back to our phones (the very opposite of what a dinner experience with friends should be) we were so annoyed with the ordering process (there's no option to split the bill) we begged for a live person to be able to take our order, which they did accommodate. This created another ordeal of one party having to order first and closing out. Because we were the second party to order, at 8:30pm (2 hours after we arrived) I had to flag someone down to get the simple guac appetizer we ordered. Our few tacos arrived 20+ minutes later. For the tiny amount of lukewarm food we received this is unacceptable. The tacos were tasty, but I am a bit confused why the exact same cole slaw is used on every single taco. For example - I'd think seared tuna and coconut fried shrimp or chicken would adhere to different flavors.Maybe that's a matter of opinion but I can guarantee that service, getting cutlery and plates along with expecting a guac appetizer in under two hours is not. No one is going to want to work this hard to have a...

TLDR: I would order few of the Coco Loco Tacos, Chimichurri Steak Tacos, Hawaiian Chicken Quesadilla, and end it with Tres Leche.

Came here for lunch with my gf and her parents on a late Sunday morning. There's no parking in front of the restaurant, as it's a narrow one way street, but there's a massive parking lot behind the plaza and limited parking to the left of the plaza.

They happened to have happy hour specials where select appetizers and drinks were half off. Don't remember how often they planned on having this deal. Service is pretty decent for the most part. At times, you do need to go flag someone down if you need something. Otherwise, the staff members, from our assigned waiter, the bartender, and manager, were all very friendly and gave good recommendations.

For drinks, we ordered the Passion Fruit Pina Colada ($12) and the Mango Mojito ($12). Both drinks were good, but liked the Mango Mojito better. The rum in the Pina Colada stood out from the rest of the ingredients, making it less enjoyable.

For appetizers, we tried the Chicken Tortilla Soup ($5). I believe this is new to the menu and for starters, this was pretty good.

For entrees, we ordered a bunch of stuff to try a variety of items: Quesa Birria ($17) - This has been super trendy over the past few years and I haven't been a fan of the places I've tried them. This was recommended by the staff as the beef has been slow cooked for three hours. At this point, I think it's just me where I'm not a fan of the Birria craze due to the amount of cheese and the messiness of dipping it in a cup of oil.

Hawaiian Chicken Quesadilla ($14) - I've had chicken quesadilla all my life and this is the first time I'm having it with pineapple. A simple additional topping and it's a game changer.

Coco Loco ($6) - This was my absolute favorite taco I had here. The breaded shrimp with sweet chili made this taste phenomenal along with the cole slaw and sprinkled coconut flakes or enhanced taste. The Carny ($5.50) - This is a braised pork shoulder topped with pickled cabbage, poblano creama and cotija cheese. I have to say this was okay, but not my favorite. Chimichurri Steak ($6.50) - This consisted of flank steak marinated in pineapple soy topped with chimichurri sauce, crispy onions, and scallion. The steak was well made and flavored. I did enjoyed the added flavoring of the chimichurri and the crispy onion topping.

We ended our meal with the Tres Leche ($6), which is made fresh in house. One of the best desserts I've had in a while. Super fluffy and delicate fresh out of their oven. Wouldn't have wanted this...

Food is great, but knocked off 2 stars for the method of their service. Let me explain. The hosts sits you down and tells you to scan the QR code for the menu. Which is fine. But then you have to actually order on your cell phone AND enter your credit card information right then and there. It only charges you $0.01 until you close out the check at the end, but still. I'm in my mid 20's and this was very frustrating. If my mother had come on her own and she doesn't have a QR scanner capable phone, would they have given her a paper menu?

Food was great. Deff exceeded my expectations. (I did not have high ones for this place). I had 3 different tacos and they were each delicious with their own flavors. Tacos are $5.00 each. ($5.50 for steak). If they raise their prices even a cent above, I would not be back. $5 is a little bit of a stretch to begin with.

Since we're not drinkers, we didn't get alcohol. So we had to hail down a server for water. And then she told us the fountain is in the back and you fill up cups yourself. Free soda I'm guessing? Don't know we got water but I guess it's free. I then needed some utensils. So we had to hail down servers again. Also there was no heat on and we were freezing the whole time.

Finally we were done and had to pay on our phones. We had to leave a tip which, I thought was hilarious. We had like 5 different people come to our table for everything and half of them we had to hail down. We left just a few bucks on our $80 bill. Not our fault. Not the waitresses fault. But why am I expected to tip on this automation robot service when we didn't have a single server voluntarily come to our table to ask us if we needed anything? No thanks.

Would I come back? For take out, sure. But the whole service was REALLY a damper and felt like we were on our own the whole time. Glad we tried it but probably won't be back for...