Vaca Brava - Old San Juan — Restaurant in San Juan

I cannot stress this enough: do NOT come here. It is a complete waste of your time, money, and appetite.

After waiting 45 minutes for a table, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt since it seemed busy inside—BIG mistake. Once seated, we waited 20 minutes before anyone even approached us to ask if we needed anything. Knowing how slow the service was, we placed all our food and drink orders at once. Our server wrote them down and returned 5–10 minutes later with just one pitcher of water—for a party of six. While waiting for our food, we had to flag down a random server for more water since our assigned server was nowhere to be seen.

Over the next hour, we watched staff exit the restaurant for smoke breaks and return, seemingly ignoring us—despite the fact that we were seated right by the door. Eventually, our actual server introduced herself, but she was completely unwelcoming and acted as if interacting with customers was a chore. She briefly asked if we needed anything and then disappeared for what felt like an eternity.

At this point, we noticed multiple parties who arrived after us getting their food while we were still waiting. We finally flagged down our server and asked when ours would be ready. Her response? “There’s a bigger group here, so their order is ahead of yours. It’ll be another 20 minutes, but I’ll check.”

It wasn’t until after this interaction—over an hour after we ordered—that she brought out some of our meals. The food had clearly been sitting out for a while, as it was cold and soggy. The rest of the dishes were just as disappointing—bland, soggy, and, in the case of the rice, undercooked to the point that hard grains were getting stuck in my teeth. To top it off, one of our orders was missing entirely. Turns out, they never even put it in. Instead, they offered a grilled chicken plate, which, unsurprisingly, was just as mediocre as the rest of the meal.

By the end of this ordeal, we asked to speak with a manager to express our frustrations. After asking two employees, he finally came out—arms folded, rude, and dismissive.

They comped two of our meals, but honestly, I cannot believe I spent a single cent at this place. The employees clearly know there are serious issues with both service and food quality, yet they blatantly choose to do nothing to improve it—in fact, they seem to actively make the dining experience worse.

I typically don’t write reviews like this, but it’s important to warn others about how terrible this place is. I know I’m not alone in my experience, because we overheard another group complaining about how awful their meal was as they walked out.

Once again, I don’t mean to be cruel or unfair, but this is the reality of our experience. If you’re looking for somewhere to eat in the area, avoid this place...

We were really excited to visit Vaca Brava after seeing all the hype, but sadly, it turned into a very disappointing and stressful experience.

Upon arrival, there was no one to greet us inside. My son noticed the greeter outside, but instead of welcoming us, she seemed annoyed when I approached her to ask if we should meet her there. Her attitude made us feel like we were in the wrong for not knowing what to do—definitely not the way to start a dining experience.

We were seated quickly, which was surprising for a busy tourist spot at 2 PM. However, this wasn’t because of great service—it turned out the restaurant was half empty.

Our server, Digna, made the experience even worse. Her attitude was awful throughout the entire time we were there. She was not only unwelcoming but also outright rude when we asked her questions about the menu and the sides. She acted as if we were inconveniencing her by simply trying to understand the options. I’m one of those who believes that not everyone is suited to work in the hospitality industry, and Digna is a perfect example of why. She made us feel like we were bothering her just by being there.

For appetizers, we ordered the Plato de la Vaca. It was underwhelming—just average local fried grease saturated empanadas, most filled with guava. For our main dish, we ordered the Tendedero de la Vaca cooked medium well. The dish took forever to arrive, and when it finally did, the flavor was off, and the meat was dry and inconsistent—some cuts were well done, while others were medium rare. To make things worse, the sides (Arroz mampostea’o’, tostones de pana, and tostones de plátano) took even longer to come out, well after the main dish had already been served. The tostones de plátano tasted like they were frozen, and the rice was awful, which was incredibly disappointing.

The drink situation was bizarre. We ordered sodas and club soda from the fountain, but when we asked for a refill, Digna told us they don’t offer refills. When I requested to speak to the manager, he didn’t bother to come over. Instead, Digna informed us that he authorized refills after I raised the issue. If a customer asks to speak to a manager, it’s usually a sign something is wrong, and it should be addressed directly—not dismissed through a server.

We were initially drawn in by the pictures and the massive meat platters, but the experience is definitely not worth the hype, money, or stress. You don’t go to a restaurant expecting to deal with rude staff, dry and inconsistent food, poorly timed service, and bad management.

Save yourself the trouble—don’t...

This is the second time I have gone to this restaurant in San Juan, and this second time has been the worst, the food is very good but the waitress “Andrea” and manager “Ivana” that were working on 05/24/23 around 5pm, were the worst and because of them I will not return to this restaurant, I felt very discriminated, we ordered steak, mofongo and the Kankan, I asked the waitress to get metal utensils because we could not cut the meat with the plastic utensils that we were provided with, the waitress words were “ we do not have metal utensils no longer” so I let it be, several minutes later I see a table next to us that has one set of metal utensils and I asked the waitress, what was the magic word to get metal utensils and her response was, “ all we had was one and I gave it to that table and told them that’s all we had”. So I let it go, when we stood up from the table to leave I looked around and all the tables with people just arriving had metal utensils, so I looked for the manager, which I had to wait for about 10 minutes because she was “busy”. I told her that she should talk to her staff because I felt that I was discriminated since I being a female was there with my wife, and was told that they did not have metal utensils and it was unbelievable how the manager said that al the utensils were dirty and that they could had not given us one. My opinion if your running a restaurant and you see that a group of people are ordering meat that their job is to try and get them clean to give to the customers, especially if I asked for it, not ones but twice. I could not even get a response from the manager she just stood there and did not even say a word. I hope that someone that is in charge would respond to us because I can not believe that in a tourist place and we were treated in the...