Mama Antonia's Restaurant — Restaurant in San Diego

This is an eatery in the heart of San Diego’s historic old town. Any food establishment here has the difficulty of managing massive swings of customers throughout the tourist season and the regular season for locals. I don’t know the history of this eatery, but I can tell you from my experience yesterday, it does not serve the market with distinction. The food is on par with what one can find at a street taco shop. The only distinguishing factors is they serve it on a nice plate. We ordered two relatively simple dishes, and they came out very slowly due to an obvious shortness of staff. The servers were very kind, wonderful young ladies who are doing their absolute best to take care of customers. In Old Town, the Mexican food available should be reflective of the hundreds of years of culture and should stand out from other local eateries. Unfortunately, tourist may not know the difference between really good Mexican food and what was served here last night. The food was flavorless and in very small quantities. The guacamole was not freshly made it tasted store bought with more lemon/lime juice than a margarita. The chips were not impressive and were mostly broken pieces. The vegetarian burrito was thrown together with a previously cooked tortilla, stuffed with bell peppers and covered in sauce. The image and the description in the menu mentioned vegetables, not simply peppers. This eatery seems to be far more focused on a place to drink rather than a Spanish culinary experience. For the money $80 I could have fed a family of six buying at a taco shop and received far better food. I do not recommend...

We went yesterday and right away I got the sense that service was going to bad for a few reasons, 1. A waitress in the middle of delivering food sat us 2. There was a line to use the bathroom and there was no toilet seat covers 3. We had to flag the waitress done for her just to take the order. The only reason we came here was because we thought they has karoake or some kind of live entertainment but when we arrived the live entertainment was on break, but they also looked kind of sloppy and unkept to be musical acts. So while the entertainment was on break, there was noooo music playing just the collective noise of chatter. However, the chips and salsa were good, and when our food order was put in the food came out fast and it was good. The tampiquena steak and 3 chiles enchiladas. I will say the little light skinned waitress and the tan one with the accent were very sweet it was honestly not their fault they have bad mgmt. So like I said everyone was running around, yoi had kitchen delivering food with front of house. However they did not have time to come check on you during the meal so if you want things like more chips, condiments, etc forget about it. We even saw the table next to us get up and leave and trying to get someone to bring the check was slow too. I ended up getting up to be charged at the cash register that no one was manning and like five people passed without acknowledgement of the line standing there. JUST SKIP THIS PLACE IF YOU WANT A GOOD EXPERIENCE, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE THAT IS WELL STAFFED...

If I could leave less than 1 star I would. I don't know if they had a problem serving their own kind or if they were new but after reading other peoples reviews I think they just have a problem period. Not only did my cousin have to go grab menus off another table after about 10-15 minutes of waiting with out being greeted, but they didn't even offer water while we waited to order. We saw people who came in after us being served before us and waited on immediately after arrival, service we didn't receive. My cousin ordered caldo de res and got shredded beef with bell pepper in caldo that tastes like norswisa de pollo, not caldo de res! Then I had to flag down a different waitress because ours went into the back and didnt return to check on us and it still took about 20 min to get from our original waitress who upon review realized she didnt serve us our complete order. Long story short she deducted the missing guacamole and gave us a "discount" but when I checked my bank balance the "discount" didn't seem to have been applied. How are they still in business doing business like this is beyond me .. save yourself and go across the street if your craving Mexican food .. such a shame because it looked cute from...