Casa Del Barco - Canal Walk — Restaurant in Richmond

We really want to like this restaurant because of it being a great location with a cute patio conveniently located on the canal. However, after dining here on several occasions during the past three years, we have given up on waiting to have a good experience before giving our review. We went for dinner last Saturday night, they were not busy. Hostess seated us immediately and informed us that there will be an automatic 20% gratuity added to our check. Normally we tip at least 20% but the service we received here wasn’t worthy of any amount close to that. Our waitress spoke so softly we could barely hear her. She did not greet us or ask if we were ready to order. She approached us and asked if we were “good with just water”. We told her we wanted to order drinks. We had to flag her down to order our food. My order arrived incorrect. I wasn’t even sure what was on my plate. We flagged her down after our food was dropped off and she says “oh that looks like a mushroom taco” I had ordered one chicken tinga and one shrimp taco. She said she would get me the correct taco and left the incorrect plate in front of me. I guess the chicken taco was correct and i was expected to eat it off of the plate with the mushroom taco which looked unappealing to me. The shrimp taco was brought to our table on a separate plate and when my husband was almost finished with his meal. When she came with the “check” she flashed the grand total on her hand held device and told us that they “took off the mushroom taco so not to worry we weren’t charged for it.” Really?? My husband asked to see the itemized bill and she struggled to locate it on her device. Other cons to this restaurant are: they only honor happy hour prices if you sit at the bar, we’ve been there during happy hour to see that the bar is two deep with patrons waiting to get happy hour prices while the restaurant and patio are empty. When we were there last week (we tried to go for happy hour earlier in the week) we were told that we could order at the bar to get happy hour prices and then take our food and drinks to the outside picnic table area adjacent to the nice patio, even though the nice patio was empty with no one even dining. The automatic gratuity is ridiculous. If they provided good training and good service then the waiters would receive good tips. They charge an extra fee if you want to request patio seating when making your reservation. They charge you for chips and salsa, your supposed to get free refills but we ran out of the tiny amount of salsa and it was difficult to flag our waitress to request a refill on chips or salsa. The food is just okay. The service is slow and honestly the service is a huge disappointment every time we have been there. I do want to give a shout out to the guy who’s job seemed to be delivering the chips, he was the only one we interacted with who was friendly with a smile and appeared to enjoy his job. He should be a waiter instead of just...

First of all, to have such a strategic location, it should have been a very good experience eating at this establishment. However, the food and service was the most disappointing experience at a restaurant I've ever had. Secondly, the food itself is the most inauthentic Mexican food I've had, the chips and guacamole were way too salty, the tortillas of the carne asada fajitas were too cold. The side dish of the guacamole, beans, and rice was the least appealing side dish I've had. Traditionally, it's served with pinto beans that are mashed, but this side dish came with whole black beans...they weren't even cooked all the way. The rice has no flavor whatsoever. To make it worse, they don't even serve chips and salsa while ordering drinks and waiting for food, saying that you have to order it which is totally a scam, not to mention the food is quite expensive. The entire layout except for the tequilas is the most boring, uninspired, Mexican restaurant layout I've ever seen which is usually colorful and has pretty designs that show off the culture and history. To make it even worse, the steak that is used for the fajitas is totally wrong and what's even more sad is that the portion of the t-bone steak (it's typically a thicker cut) it's served with is actually so small and flavorless (it has more vegetables than actual steak) . Usually, fajitas are served with a skirt or flank steak that is cooked in high heat because of the lean cut which can absorb the flavor of the vegetables much better anyway, it's not just about putting steak on top because that is what comes with it. Thirdly, the Shirley Temple has little to no bubbles (it's probably just water honestly), it doesn't even come with a cherry, the syrup came on the bottom which goes to show what little effort there is put into serving good drinks. If it was a good drink, it would have been already stirred. I can only imagine the fancy alcoholic drinks they serve, which as they say, is their specialty but given this review, I have serious doubts. And finally, the service could have been better, everyone was polite, but there was nothing and no one charming or charismatic enough to say I want to go back for their excellent service and food. But I will say they handed the food to me instead of putting it on the table which is considerably unprofessional serving etiquette, even with sitting at a booth table (yes it may be a awkward to reach, but one can still be strategic about who to serve the food to first to avoid this kind of thing). And that was...

This is a difficult one as I really want to like this place. In the same ownership is the boathouse - excellent and CanCan which is a Richmond favorite. This place - the food is just terrible. The only Mexican restaurant with a British cook. I am British so I presume a British cook because it’s the only Mexican that is blander than my mothers cooking. I think if you took the color out of the food everything would be just grey mush. Zero spice, flavor and quality products. I know I know this is harsh and I am sure the cook is not British but it’s that bad. I keep trying and going back thinking it was just a bad day and am then reminded that it’s just the norm. The problem is the location is excellent so you forget the kitchen is as Mexican as my Scottish grandfather who hated anything other than boiled vegetables on the 3rd day of reheating. On a positive note the team are nice and the food comes quick, the drinks come half way though the meal as standard so as long as you hate flavored food and don’t mind feeling like you have eaten a rock after then this is your place. As a Mexican restaurant it’s zero stars. As a nice team of people they get 4 stars. If the Zombie apocalypse comes I imagine this is the type of food we will all have to survive on, for now I would like something better than end of the world demo rations. Truly terrible it’s nearly a comedy night out, actually maybe that’s the marketing plan as at least there is a reason the owners allow it, ow no hang on a second - it’s location location location because it can’t be menu, kitchen, food quality. I encourage Mexicans to visit this place to feel amazing about there own food being difficult to replicate, maybe to gain a cult following of amusement. Maybe this place is owned by the government who are conditioning the local population for when the food chain crashes. Maybe a local charity sends trainee cooks here who failed all the exams. Maybe the local hospital P&L is off so they need to generate more cash flow. Maybe the owners have a grudge against Mexican food and it’s all a conspiracy. Maybe bad elements of society want to trash Mexican food in the hope we will all return to hotdogs from street vendors who do not wash their hands and count the extra tasty to spices - who knows. So bad I took 10 min to write this with the hope others can experience the shocking feeling of the Alien movies with something growing inside you the next morning. Personally I like the cult following of amusement. Go here and giggle but good luck...