El Chupacabra Greenwood — Restaurant in Seattle

We’ve been eating at Chupacabra for nearly fifteen years and have overall enjoyed it. Tonight we had an angering and inappropriate experience. A bartender came out during our meal and directly reprimanded our and another family’s kids, 4 and 7 year olds, to not leave their table. An adult directing well behaved kids without the parents’ permission is absolutely not appropriate.

Additional information. We are two families totaling four adults and four kids. One of the kids is not of age to get vaccinated so we opted to sit outside. Chupacabra does not allow tables to be pulled together, and each only sits four. Fine. We had the kids sit in an adjacent table and were cognizant of their actions the entire dinner. The younger kids periodically would oscillate between tables to check in with the adults. Their paths did not stray from the boundaries of our tables. And we were dining between 5 and 6:30 PM on a Saturday.

The bartender, near the end of our meal, asked that our kids stay in their seats due to the restaurant getting busy. Odd given that they were not wondering outside of our tables, but we understood and talked with our kids to remain in their seats. The seats at the table 3 feet away from the adult table. Several minutes later the bartender came out and told the kids that she was ‘the boss’ and that for their safety they needed to remain seated.

I addressed this with the bartender inside shortly after this interaction occurred. I was informed that she had been watching from inside and seeing other customers rolling their eyes at our kids. There was literally one other table within the bartender’s vantage point. A couple that was drinking and periodically doing some heavy making out about five feet away from our kids’ table. Definitely a discerning set of patrons to gauge your customer’s satisfaction on. And, being a parent that is mindful of surroundings and has conservatively decided to leave restaurants if I felt my kids were being disruptive, I observed this couple and did not agree with this assessment.

My seven year old has asked several times this evening what she had done wrong. It’s confusing to them and should have never happened.

The point is that it was not okay for this bartender to engage with our kids. I will be speaking with the manager when that person is available. And we will not be returning to...

I'm bummed to have to leave a negative review, was looking forward to a nice dinner out with my family, but this was a horrible experience from start to finish. We had to wait an hour and a half outside in the cold for a table on a Thursday night. After an hour or so they asked us if we wanted to sit outside instead (after seating ~10 groups that arrived after us outside), but we didn't want to after we had already committed an hour of wait time to eat inside. No apologies were given, they did not check in on us at all besides that once. Hosts were dismissive and unwelcoming.

Ended up being seated an hour and a half after arrival, and despite the wait it took another 10 minutes for a server to come over and offer to take our drink order. To her credit, our server was pretty nice, and they gave us some guacamole for free (not on purpose though, they mistook our order).

Unfortunately, the food was a disappointment as well. We paid $15 for "large" burritos and instead of receiving what we saw in the photos here, we got some very mediocre sized foil wrapped burritos thrown on a plate with 5 or 6 tortilla chips next to it. Additionally, my burrito was missing almost half the ingredients listed on the menu. When I brought it up to the server she said that they were in there, despite the fact I'd eaten a quarter of the burrito and hadn't come across any cheese, salsa or sour cream. After a little back and forth she agreed to take it back to the kitchen, and when I glanced over a few minutes later one of the kitchen workers was glaring at me intensely. At this point I felt very uncomfortable. They ended up bringing out a new burrito that actually had everything in it, however the flavor was lacking unfortunately.

To top it all off, the entire time we were there, there were a number of couples seated inside who were not eating, and barely ordering drinks and were making out the entire time gratuitously which absolutely ruined the ambiance inside. It also explained why we had to wait almost 2 hours to be seated.

In the end, what should have been a pleasant hour long outing turned into a 2 and a half hour nightmare of an experience, with poor food and worse prices. We will not...

If you value good customer service, do not eat here. Opt for El Moose in Ballard if looking for an alternative.

I've worked at restaurants and grocery stores, and I always approach these employees with utmost politeness and friendliness-- I know there are difficult people out there and I try not to be one of them.

Went there two times over the past month. The first time, the service was okay. Not super warm and friendly but not rude or anything either. Food was great. Filling, flavorful burritos at a reasonable price.

Second time was another story. Our server was rude from the get-go. We let her know as we were seated that we were ready to order food whenever she's ready because we knew what we wanted. She replied, "you'll have to wait until I take this other table's order because they were here first." I wouldn't have handled it that way personally.

Then, when we ordered, she was short with us because my wife asked a clarifying question about a menu item. I thought it was weird that she was trying to get us to hurry up. She just had hostile and impatient body language the whole time.

Then she double-charged us for a quesadilla (everyone makes mistakes, understandable) and charged an extra $2 for my wife's burrito. The fish burrito says it's smothered with white sauce and melted cheese and there is no extra charge for this on the menu. We looked again at the menu and confirmed this. She said that to make a burrito "wet" costs $2, which is true for the other types of burrito, clearly noted on the menu. But the fish burrito was a separate menu item. This could have definitely been an error on the menu, but charge me the price that's on the menu. I didn't want to sit there and argue over two dollars. If it was me, I would make it right. But she chose not to.

If you're looking for good service and much better Mexican food, head over to El...