La Mexicana Restaurant — Restaurant in Newport

We have dined here for years. It used to be one of our favorite authentic Mexican restaurants but it has completely gone downhill. It was busy when we arrived around 4:30 this evening so we understood a bit of a delay in ordering and receiving our food, however, the waitress was pleasant but much slower than we anticipated and she hardly checked on us after we received our food. The food/alcohol prices have gone up exponentially with inflation. We don’t mind paying these higher amounts if the food and service are good. Tonight, neither was good. My husband is Mexican and has always ordered their Menudo stew (one of his favorites). When the stew was delivered we knew immediately that something was wrong because the smell of it was rancid and overpowering, which it has never been before. My husband waited patiently for the waitress to come around to check on us. Finally about 12-15 minutes later she came back and he told her about the stew, asked her to take it away and remove it from the bill. Which she did after offering a sincere apology. He asked if she could send over the manager so he could explain the dilemma and inform him not to serve anyone else from that pot of stew. The manager never came. And I’ll mention here that the rest of our food was sub-par compared to what it once was. We had chicken flautas, beef flautas and a milanesa torta. Everything was lacking in flavor except the beans which were flavorful but had such a strange over whipped consistency (whipped refried beans???). The waitress finally brought our bill and we saw that she had removed the menudo but overcharged us for a Michelada drink. We asked again for the manager to tell him about the stew and to ask about the overcharge on the drink. She told us the manager refused to come talk to us. We walked to the front of the restaurant to talk to the manager. I asked why he didn’t come to the back of the restaurant, where we were sitting, to talk with us like we had asked. He was dismissive and said he didn’t come back because the waitress took care of everything. We got the drink overcharge fixed but it was a total waste to speak with him. His management skills are severely lacking and we never got to mention the issue with the menudo stew. We really hope they do not serve it to anyone else. Needless to say, we will not...

Dude. Dude!!!! I can't even begin to explain how exciting it is to find legit Mexican food. Well, I can explain and I shall.

Briefly, the history of Hector and Mexican food:

Grew up in San Francisco and it was everywhere so I didn't think of it as hard to come by

Went to college in San Diego and enjoyed Socal Mexican food; took it for granted

Moved to Utah and realized within a month of being there. Mexican food, REAL DEAL LEGIT Mexican good ain't everywhere.

Moved to Ohio and was reminded of Utah, only worse.

Until I went to...... Kentucka!!!!!!

If you've ever watched True Romance, Alabama says "I had to come all the way from the highway and byways of Tallahassee, Florida to MotorCity, Detroit to find my true love. If you gave me a million years to ponder, I would never have guessed that true romance and Detroit would ever go together."

Well, it appears as though I had to come all the way from San Francisco California to Newport to find true Mexican food.

Pozole is something you don't find just anywhere and if you find it at one of those restaurants with nice paint and recently renovated floors and stuff. That is not pozole. It's something else. But here, they have real deal Christmas morning pozole and dang. It's good. Really good.

They also have fresh tamales. Similar to the statement above. Not everyone has real deal tamales.

Now, since I love this place and I know y'all are gonna love this place. Let's make each other a promise.

Tip. The. Servers. Really. Well.

Drop a 20 spot and enjoy that feeling of helping someone else. It's a tough job and... You can watch Reservoir Dogs for the...

We have been frequenting La Mexicana for years. The service is usually pretty terrible but the food has consistently been the best authentic Mexican in the city, no question. Occasionally they will throw some extra charges on the bill but will adjust them if you point it out (shady as hell, but again, the tacos are so good! 🤣) However, after the way we were treated during our last visit, we will never be back. They have a posted tequila special every week and we usually have a shot and a marg with our meals. This time, the server rang the shots incorrectly and charged us $22 extra on the bill. We brought it to her attention and she told us there were no specials. We pointed out the sign with the posted special, and she continued to insist that there were no specials. We asked for the manager and were told she was “busy”. We said no problem, we’ll wait…when she finally came out, she proceeded to ALSO tell us that there were no specials, then said she needed to “check with her partner” to see if they could honor the POSTED SPECIAL! After waiting another 20 minutes, the server comes out, drops the same bill on the table, and says there’s nothing they can do. On top of it all, the other server working in our section was extremely rude and started trash talking (in Spanish) right in front of us while we were trying to get this resolved. We will miss our weekly visits for those delicious tacos but once you start stealing my money and openly disrespecting...