El Meson Latin American Cuisine bar — Restaurant in Philadelphia

I visited your restaurant twice this weekend. One for breakfast and the other dinner. While your food was pleasant both times, I noticed several areas of much needed improvement. One the wait time for food was horrible, not because the food was not worth it. But because once you took my drink and food order I didn't see my server again for several minutes. Both times their were less than 10 people inside the restaurant. Second both times we order a specific item you said you didn't have it, not good for a restaurant. If you put something on the menu your diners expect you to have it "Johnny cakes". Third and worse in my opinion. This is a Spanish restaurant, why was only 80's soft rock music played? During breakfast it was Spanish gospel music. While the owner was blamed for the music choice, because I did ask. Let me suggest something as a diner, play the music that defines your restaurant. If you are a Latino restaurant play Spanish music, play music that inspires your diner to return, consume and uplift their mood. Now, while your food was pleasant it was not great. Your menu lacks some important items. For example, carne guisada, chuleta frita, pollo en salsa...etc. your restaurant has a beautiful decor and has amazing potential if the Vision matches the expectations. Your staff nice better training in a tentative of the customer. Please don't take my criticism as a disgruntled customer because I wasn't, I was a happy customer but I wanna be a return customer. I strongly suggest the owner to visit this restaurant Malaga in Trenton NJ on a Saturday night. Ask to speak to the owner one of them will be there. Ask them what has made them so successful all these years. Ask them what's their goal when a person enters their restaurant? Meson owner you will learn a lot if you listen to Malaga owners. Good luck, message me personally if you would like...

We’ve been to this location 2x before Covid and the food was good, service was okay and atmosphere was family/kid friendly. My husband and I decided to come back with our kids a week ago so that my 4 and 10 yr old kids can taste the food. As soon as we got in we were greeted by a friendly staff but we should have turned around and left when we saw a table with two females smoking hooka and mind you they had kids with them (an infant and a girl looks about 13 yrs old). Anyways, long story short. Our appetizer came out fast (10 mins or less) and it was good but the main entree took 30 mins to come out and on top of this it was the wrong order. They said they were going to replace it but by this time we were already annoyed because another table started smoking hooka as well and the thought of waiting another 30 mins for our new order to come out would have irritate me off some more. We told the waitress to forget about it and we will pay for the appetizer we ate. I told her we want the check, then she said to bare with them for a minute because the manager wants to come out and speak to us. Waited 5 mins and manager still didn’t come out. So, I packed my kids and started walking out and and I said if the manager don’t come out now we not paying for any thing. The waitress then said not to worry about it and gave the appetizer for free. They need to have a sign that this place serves/allows smoking of hooka inside and it’s not kid friendly. Who in their right mind will allow their kids to inhale this stuff? Lesson learn if I see hooka as soon as I walk in I need to get out. I don’t even know why we stayed, guess we were so hungry at the time but that’s our fault. I would not recommend this place to anyone who has kids and allows their child(ren) to inhale...

I came to El meson to try it out for the first time. It was valentines day and I was getting out of work late so my options were limited. This place had a closing time of 11pm. I had seen the pictures of the food and they looked very presentable. So I went with my wife, my bother and his girlfriend to check it out. First thing is that as the reviews from 1 year ago stated, you will be waiting very long. We sat down at 9pm and no one came to take our orders until 10:08. This place says that it closes at 11pm. The table behind us started to complaint because they had been sitting for 2hrs and now food yet. I think that should have been my cue to leave this place. I decided to stay because it was late and there were no other restaurants open. My brother asked for water while he was ordering and the water came 30 minutes later at 1038pm and our alcoholic beverages at 11pm. The First appetizers came out at 11:30 and the food finally at 12am. It took 3hrs to get our food. We were ordering how do you even tip this kind of service and to my surprise, they had included in the bill a $57 tip. Bill was $317 plus a self included tip and $25 tax.

The margaritas that we order, parcha, strawberry and Limon were left at the table because of how bad they were. The food was very over priced and the menus had whiteout erasing the prices and rewritten over with black pen.

My adviced, go somewhere else. Unless you want to wait 2-3hrs for your food, pay double for the price of the food and have the waitress give herself an undeserving 18% tip.

It was a very bad experience and I would never...