Deaverdura — Restaurant in San Juan

TL;DR: Honestly, kind of depressing. The kitchen is doing good work but the front of house is horrendous.

Service: The service is horrible and definitely why the rating is low. They don't have a real menu. The server just shouted it to us and said the menu on the wall was wrong... Then update it!!! It's a chalk wall! Just erase it and write the current menu.

If it wasn't for the woman Leanne, the front of house would collapse. Our server (male) was horrible. He took forever to come over (so long that some tables just got up and left with no service whatsoever). When he did finally take our drink orders, he brought it from the bar, spilled it all over our table (which is fine. Accidents happen) and proceeded to act like nothing happened and walked away. I called for him and asked that he at least give us some napkins to clean up his mess. He seemed a bit annoyed by this but brought us 3 napkins.

After placing our orders, he never came back. The woman, Leanne, went and got our food for him. Unfortunately, it had sat in the window for a while and it was cold. Since this poor woman is doing everything, food sitting in the window was common. The food in the window in the attached picture sat for 10 minutes before anyone grabbed it.

Bottom line, the guy who served us was horrible and hardly helped the woman. She was practically the only person working the front of house. I felt bad for her.

The guy server was very good at appearing busy while doing nothing at all, which is a shame. Food shouldn't be going cold in the window and customers shouldn't be walking out because they're not getting served.

As I type this, we've waited 20 minutes for our bill that we asked for. We're about tempted to just leave since they're not even bringing us our ticket... This place is horribly run. Worst service I've ever seen at a restaurant.

Food:

Pastelillo (vegetarian) - The pastelillo had a mild but good taste. But the bean soup was really good.

Pastelillo (chicken) - This had a nice taste, coupled with the yellow rice and peas. It definitely felt a bit more authentic than surrounding restaurants.

Drinks:

Juice and Rum (tamarind) - It's just tamarind juice mixed with some random rum. It was ok. Not a great cocktail. Don't expect too much.

Juice and Rum (Caribbean Cherry) - Just like above. Just cherry...

We came a bit unsure of what we would get since I didn't think there was enough information on the internet/maps comments. I kept reading it was cheap and great value, but cheap can be subjective based on where you come from.

The best: We ordered a plate of pernil with arroz con moros (slow roasted Puerto Rican pulled pork with yellow rice and beans) and it came with a little bit of salad on the side. Very well balanced flavors, definitely flavorful, the salad is well dressed as well. $10. To me, that's definitely cheap, considering most other places I ate at in San Juan so far were more expensive than that for main dishes.

We also ordered a plate of fried pork chop with a side of mofongo. They said they didn't have plantain mofongo (the most common one), but instead one made of yuca, so we tried it. This dish was also $10 including a small salad, but +$2 for mofongo side substitution. The mofongo was like a big croquete with mashed yuca inside. Pretty good! The pork was very well seasoned/marinated and enjoyable.

We also got a beer for $3 (botella).

The not so good (but still, ok): The wait to enter. We were standing outside, as the sign and someone else that was also waiting there indicated. But nobody came out for more than 5 min to fetch us.

I went inside to use the restroom and ask whether we could come on (there were about 5-6 tables that had left and more than half had been cleaned already). After that, the wait wasn't too bad. It does take a couple of tries to get a waiters attention, and we heard the cook ringing the bell for the waiters to pick up food many times, but it's nothing too bad.

The food quality and price definitely beats the wait we had to do, so I'm giving 5 stars to this place. I'd love to come back and try some other dishes like the fish, and maybe...

This was the worst place I have ever seen in my life. The service was bad. The food was AWFUL! Just terrible. Upon entering the staff seemed just miserable. No smiles and no greeting. We were just asked how many in our party and told where to sit and that the menu was on the chalkboard. The table had a sticky residue. We watched as a couple got fed up and walked out. Another diner had to seek out the waitress to pay their bill. We sat there for more than ten minutes before the waitress came to take our orders. The waitress looked tired and miserable. She was the only one working so we tried to be understanding. There were two other workers at the bar who were just standing around. I’m not sure if they were on a break. After some time another member of staff began helping her but it was neither of the two behind the bar. The bar was not busy at all. We ordered the sampler platter. It was horrible. A lot of the items were burnt. The grandules and rice tasted burnt. It was awful. I had a conversation about it with the waiter and he apologized and said he would see what he could do. He came back with several of the items remade for us but Informed us that the rice would be difficult to replace as it would come from the same pot. He did offer us white rice as a replacement but we declined. Much of the food was dry and over fried. I chosen a soursap drink that had the worst aftertaste. The other passion fruit drink was really good though. I went to the restroom to wash my hands and it reeked of urine. It was dirty and it was early afternoon so I was surprised by the state of the restroom. We checked the place out beforehand and it had pretty good reviews so we were excited to visit. We left hungry and disappointed because we couldn’t finish our food. Extremely disappointing. I hope...