Roots Restaurant — Restaurant in Rincón

My Wedding day caterer.

It is very hard to write this review as I’m a restaurant owner myself and I know that stuff happens but I booked chef Tony, owner of roots for my wedding and it didn’t go well.

I don’t know where to begin.. I’ll start with something good. The apps I ordered for my cocktail hour were great!

So here is my honest review. Several times I tried to ask questions and inquire about my invoice and portion sizes to chef Tony and he wasn’t interested in answering these questions. At one point he was rude and irritated that I would even have questions about the portion sizes, he got off the phone and never gave me an answer. I simply wanted to know how much ounces per person were the sides going to be. So I can figure out how much more/less food I needed to order.

I had a 50 person guest list originally and about 3 weeks prior to reception I had a “potential” of 20 additional guests. Bringing total to 70 guests including kids. Even though I wasn’t sure these last minute add-ons would show, I understood him charging additionally for these guests. He charged me $63/person instead of $70 offering me a slight discount which was appreciated at the time.

Day of reception: We had a total of 54 guests that arrived instead of the original 67 that I was charged for. The reason I bring this up is because the position sizes for main entrees were significantly small and they ran out of everything. (Except for the pork).

How is this possible if I was charged for 67 plates, charged for vendor plates and charged for the lechón as an additional add-on but I only had 54 guests. How did we run out of food.

Our food was supposed to start at 6:15pm but staff from roots told me they had a time of 7:00pm so I don’t know if that was the wedding planners fault or what but food didn’t come out until 8pm. That’s 2 hours late that they were trying to figure out how to burn time so we wouldn’t notice. We noticed.

Once we got into reception hall, people were dancing, drinking, partying and I finally asked what is going on? Aren’t we supposed to be having dinner right now? People were getting drunk and we need to eat. They finally told me that the food was late due to the lechón and was going to be another 25min. I was so upset because it through the whole party off.

After 35 min past I got up and asked chef Tony what was going on with the food he responded with “lechón guy is a sub contractor and it’s out of my hands” he said nothing else. My guests were hungry and getting really drunk. I had to ask them to feed the kids because they couldn’t wait anymore. Food came out another 30min later. The lechón was never displayed on buffet line the way it was supposed to be. Which seems like a silly thing to be upset about but it was the one thing in my entire wedding that my husband asked for. He wanted to give our guests a Puerto Rican experience. But also we paid for this..

One of my guests later informed me that she had dropped a fork and when she asked the server for another she said it would need to be washed because the forks were counted. Like, what? That’s not okay. And even if that’s the case where are the other 12 forks of the guests that didn’t arrive..

I gave 3 stars because it truly breaks my heart to give any business 1 star rating because maybe they will do better. But I’m truly disappointed and it doesn’t deserve...

Do yourself a favor. Go elsewhere. I don't usually leave reviews but this one warrants cautioning others.

Food poisoning. Poor quality. Took way too long for simple meals and it felt like they were trying to pull one over on us. The only good thing about the experience is the waitress was nice and kind but gone and no where to be seen for the majority of the time we were there. Again, just go somewhere else.

Came in on a Tuesday night. Slow as can be. No one to greet us, no problem, most of the places are the seat yourself type. So that's what we did. We ordered the papi roll, tuna tartare and my vegetarian girlfriend had the fried rice with tofu. Papi roll came out in a reasonable amount of time. 20 minutes or so. Tuna tartare took 40 minutes and my girlfriends tofu fried rice took an hour.... They obviously forgot and again. We're 2 of maybe 8 people in this place. When they brought out the tartar, it was basically a pile of seaweed with a few pieces of tuna. By a few I mean you can count on one hand.... I was immediately disappointed and politely asked them to fix it. They remade it thankfully but the fact that someone would even have to ask is just sad. See photo. Again, feels like they were just trying to pull one over on us. $17 dollars for a pile of seaweed. When they brought out the remade tartare I asked about my girlfriend's food as she was incredibly hungry at this point but patient and optimistic. The BARTENDER said she'd go check. 20 minutes later it finally arrived with almost no tofu and soaked in soy sauce. They comped the fried rice for the ridiculous delay but honestly it wasn't worth it. I've been sick all night from the fish and my girlfriend keeps complaining that her stomach is bothering her. Like I said. Just go somewhere else and don't waste your money or time. Wouldn't eat here again if every meal from now till the end of time was free. And if the owner sees this, I'm sorry but get in there and get your...

At here last night with a group of ppl 8 and 2 small babies (probably not the best for small children) there was not a table large enough to sit us all but there was a small table next to us instead of offering to move the tble close to our the waitress said well maybe some people can sit here(really?!?) Also not enough chairs so we had to find a few more as in steal them from tables that we're not occupied. Then our drink order was taken kind of they took the alcohol orders and not for the others then about 15 min took rwgualer drink orders. Then the waitress came to are table and kind of took our order we named ff appetizers and then she left so we thought okay she's taking them first and will be back shortly... Some how shortly turned into about 45min when our appetizers were coming to our table but after waiting this long we we're starving and need more drinks. But instead of asking can I get you anything else she was gone came back 10 min later and said will that be all or would you like to order some more. Then took our actuall order for food after waiting for what seemed like an eternity we finally ordered real food only for it to take about 45min to an HR. The worst part about this all is me and my husband live here and wanted to take our friends out (who are here visiting us) so we picked something on the fancier looking scale. ( they ended up paying for us all as well big waste of money for them)we let them down horribly! we apologize to them and still feel bad for...