El Comal Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Pelham

What a Great restaurant! Great food and some authentic dishes in there too. We waited with bated breath for this restaurant to open and tonight, as the stars aligned, we made it there. The food was hit or miss, but where it hit, it was off the charts. The atmosphere was clean and newly revamped. Anyone who knew the Italian place before knows that the interior needed some TLC, well El Comal did it justice. Renovated and now sleek with traditional touches everywhere, it is a nice dining experience. The service left much to be desired, if only because of lack of training. The inexperienced service was easily obscured by its amazing dishes. We ordered a bit of everything and, here are the highs and lows, starting with the latter. The Carne asada was dry and over cooked. However, the nopales were a nice touch. Had it been cooked a little less, the dish may have been less like beef jerky and more like the quick seared Carne asada of my youth. Oh, well, next time. The tamales are small and topped with a tomato based sauce and ground beef that does little for it. Do yourself a favor and ask for the toppings to be left off. The chile relleno was lacking, severely. A bell pepper fashioned into a bowl, filled ground beef, and topped with copious amounts of cheese dip, not their best showing. The cheese dip is awesome, a tad bit more flavor than most restaurants around. The salsa is smokey and slightly spicier than the local fare, I approve. But where El Comal is off the charts starts with their selection of traditional seafood dishes. Ceviche, coctel de Camarones, and seafood tostadas, the list goes on, amazing! Few places can really make these dishes well, or at least the way my mother and aunts did, and they do at El Comal. The Hawaiian fajitas were moist and delicious, topped with pineapple and just delightful. What must be said is the portion size of their dishes is very large. We left satisfied and with doggy bags. The rice and beans did have an aromatic different than I am used to, clove perhaps, ever so slight, different, not bad. A huge draw back was the untrained service. Although attentive and EXTREMELY nice, the inexperience was hard to over look. Dishes were brought out as they were made (?) growing cold as we waited for the main dishes. Our party had one whose plate came out well after we were forced to eat to avoid eating completely cold food. Forgotten drinks, and such, which will correct themselves after some experience. However, if a capable hand could teach their servers the basics of serving tables, the drawbacks of eating here would be eliminated, that and knowing what NOT to order. All in all, we actually loved El Comal and plan to go back and try all their dishes. Fingers crossed that the service improves to better time the dinning experience. If you have not tried El Comal, do yourself a...

You can discount what I'm about to say because this restaurant recently opened and I'm hopeful things will improve over the next few weeks. However, my review is solely based on our experience on Thursday evening, June 13th.

We were greeted (party of seven) and promptly seated at about 6pm.

Drinks were ordered and served in a prompt fashion, then our orders were taken. Our server (first day on the job) had us repeat our orders to make sure she understood exactly what we wanted. However, out of the seven orders, only three arrived at the table correctly. For example, one diner ordered a hamburger with ketchup, mustard and onions. When the order arrived, it was chicken nuggets and fries. She agreed to eat it even though it was not what she requested. Another diner ordered two cheese enchiladas but was served chicken chimichangas. I had ordered chimichangas, but it took a long time to be served, and that was only after the manager got involved. He was able to sort out the confusion and made sure everything was correct -- except for the chicken nuggets instead of hamburger situation.  When I got the checks (I told the server that mine and my wife's were together but we received two separate tickets), my wife had been charged for two chicken quesadillas instead of the one she ordered. The guy at the register corrected the error.

The food was just OK -- not the best but definitely not the worse. I will probably eat here again but will give them time to work out some of the "just...

So today I had lunch here. I've been in this restaurant before and there's always a language barrier to order your food. So the last time i was here I later noticed on my ticket that I had gotten charged a fee for not paying cash. Today I tried to ask if I paid with a card would there be an extra fee, again language barrier, but finialy she said yes. I ask if there were any signs up about this extra charged for using a debit card or credit card, so people would be aware of this. Again a language barrier and she finial understood what i was asking and said no. So I told her I would be paying with cash. Then she couldn't find my waitress or my ticket to check me out. After a few minutes and talking among themselves they finial got my ticket and checked me out. She did apologize, for all the confusion. The food here is good and the restaurant is clean which is a plus. I do hope they can get these issues worked out so they can make it...