Madero Cantina — Restaurant in Pittsburgh

A salad isn't necessarily the most important thing on a Mexican restaurant's menu, but a good taco or burrito inspired salad can be really amazing. We ordered this salad to go (5 minute walk from the restaurant), and for some reason they put piles of the hot fajita veggies in with relatively few pieces of lettuce and lots of the fajita juice which cooked the lettuce. This is not a good salad. It's basically just fajita veggies with wilted lettuce and a lot of liquid. It wasn't really edible. I was hoping for something fresh, all they needed to do was include mostly lettuce with some room temperature beans and fajita veggies without the juice on top. A little bit of pico de gallo and a citrusy or cilantro-y crema would have been great to serve as the dressing. A salad needs to have good greens at it's core.

The cheese enchiladas were generally disappointing too, but there's really nothing egregiously wrong with them, just pretty basic. We liked the elote side, it was the only thing enjoyable in our $40 order.

I'm not a harsh critic at restaurants and I don't want to leave a negative review, I just think that they don't know how to make a salad unfortunately and some basic culinary common sense about lettuce and salads would have improved...

Went hours prior to closing and was promptly ignored for the first 15-20 minutes. We ordered an appetizer that we were charged for and never received, I ordered 3 tacos (2 chicken, 1 steak.) The steak was cold, like refrigerated cold, and the chicken was dry. Neither of my party got it was even offered choices of the 2 sides that were supposed to come with tacos. I don't know if the server decided to tell the kitchen we didn't want any or what, but at the end they wouldn't even show us a receipt. They just scrolled to down on their tablet and asked us to pay. This wasn't just an off day, this is bad service and it feels like the server was trying to scam us. 2 sets of 3 tacos and water is not $50. Even with the $5 chips we never got. We also were charged full price despite Tuesdays being 30% off. I've never had such a terrible experience there in all the times I've gone both for taco Tuesday and for when I want good Mexican food. I'll be filing a complaint in person as well now. This is inexcusable, disrespectful, and...

Total Score: 8.50

Bathroom: 4/5. It was an okay bathroom. The soap was somewhat broken. But nothing too disgusting. Just a little wet at some places.

Customer Service: 3.5/5. Server frequently checked up on us and that was really nice. However lowkey she seemed dead inside 😭. Also they really should give us like tablecloths cuz napkins were not enough for how messy this was.

Ambiance: 5/5. Lots of decorations, very bright lighting, and lots of room! It was also on the second floor so the view was very nice

Food: 4.5/5. The food was amazing! Very filling and loved the guac and cheese from the chips. It was a bit messy though, but loved the rice and meat ugh I was just sitting in silence eating this. However, there was a lot of leftover lettuce and tomato that I had no idea how to put into the burrito I think they shoulda put it in for me.

Wow: 0.5/1. Really wowed me cuz all other places were full and this was p empty. It was like I found a hidden gem.

Total Score = BR + CS + 2AM...