Puerto Nuevo Mexican & Seafood Restaurant — Restaurant in Spruce Pine

One of our top places to eat, usually at least once a week. The staff is super friendly (hola amigos, gracias por dejarnos practicar espanol con ustedes!), and the food has only gotten better with time. Their salsa bar is the best in town, and their platters and combos are all really good. They have some traditional meals, too, which can be hard to find in a place like Spruce Pine.

Our favorite dishes are La Botana, and the traditional taco platter. Some of the best tacos de asada I have had outside of Mexico!

The only feedback I have is that I feel the margaritas are priced on the high side, so we often skip and just get agua con limon instead. Otherwise, I can't think of a single negative here.

After having a terrible experience with another local "international-themed" restaurant, and seeing just how bad some restaurant owners can be, it's prompted me to come back and make sure I'm giving kudos to all the places that are treating customers right and provide consistently good service and food. Puerto Nuevo is definitely one of those...

The kitchen/waiter made a mistake with my mother's order and charged her for a dinner portion instead of the lunch portion, which she 100% ordered off the lunch menu. We both did. We didn't know that was the case until we caught it on the bill, since every time she's ordered the same thing, that's the portion she has received. After inquiring with the waiter, the manager came out and was unnecessarily rude about the whole thing. He had the gall to say that there was only one portion size of the dish, then bring out the two different sized glasses it's served in. A simple "Sorry. Even though it was a mistake, we have to charge you for the bigger portion since that's what we made." would have been fine, no worries. That didn't happen though, and how it was handled was disrespectful. Storms off mad after she's been polite the whole time and just trying to sort it out.

Probably won't be back, which is...

It is good I guess that the natives enjoy the food here, but when they take a group of 35 and stay for at least two hours (the amount of time I was there) then it slows down the number of other patrons that can get a table. Actually they were taking up about 8 tables in an already small restaurant on a Sunday. My group was a group of 7. We waited well over an hour to get a table when we had been told 25 minutes. Actually the hostess told everyone 25 minutes no matter the size of their party. I felt like either she didn’t understand what she was saying or it was intentional so people wouldn’t leave. All in all, the food was okay, the best part is the chips. For chips, I wouldn’t wait that long again and definitely don’t go...