La Jarochita — Restaurant in Stafford Township

Went here over the weekend with my wife. The food was delicious. The service - not so good - the service definitely needs more work. We made a reservation not knowing if it would be crowded and it was not. We were seated at our table after a little bit of a wait outside and some apparent confusion about our reservation. An employee dropped off a basket of chips and two sauces immediately upon being seated and they were really good. Then we waited, and waited, probably about 20 minutes or more for someone to come back and ask if we wanted anything to drink and take our order. During this time numerous employees and I believe even the manager continually walked past us. I've never seen that many employees in one small restaurant before. All seemed to be wandering around with nothing to do. In the meantime another employee who appeared to be a busser came to take the empty chip/dip plates away and tried to also take my silverware. We hadn't even ordered yet and he was clearing the table. My wife asked him if he could please bring some extra napkins and he seemed agreeable but he never came back. We saw him wandering around the rest of the night both inside and outside dining areas and checking his phone but never came back with napkins. We waited a while and tried asking another employee for napkins. She appeared to not know what we were asking. We still hadn't had anyone come to take our order yet. When our server finally did arrive we asked some questions on some items and then put in our order. I think the problem was that few of the employees actually spoke English. I ordered an appetizer based on the response to the question and what came out was not what I expected based on the response to the question and was not what I wanted at all. We didn't want to be difficult so we just made do with it. Then my entree came, not my wife's. Had to wait about another 10 minutes for her entree. That is totally wrong and should not happen. They were amazing, tasty and so much food. We had 2-3 more meals from each entree, an incredible value. We never had anyone come to check if we needed anything after the food came. It took a while to flag someone down to give us glasses of water and we tried our best to communicate that to someone not English speaking. We realized we were in a Mexican restaurant but hoped, expected we would've had better communication with the staff. Upon finishing dinner we waited again, and waited and waited for our server to come back. When the server did finally come to our table we were asked if we wanted anything else like dessert. We politely declined saying the food was great but we were too full. Then the server left and didn't come back again with the check. After some time we noticed our server was with a group of employees horsing around with others at the other side of the dining room. Server was completely oblivious to our wanting to get the check and leave. I had to get up from the table and go there to ask for the check. Like I said the food was excellent but the service was very poor. As a sidenote, it was a nice day and the doors were propped open which accounted for a number of flies around our table and landing on our food. There was also the remnants of someone's used lollipop on the windowsill next to our table. If we decide to try the food again I think it will be take out only from now on, unless I read in the reviews that the service has improved. To sum up - our server was very young, not very experienced in serving, appeared to not speak English very well as was the same with the other people we tried to ask for help. The manager (at least we believed he was the manager) was focused more on one large table outside and singing karaoke than on...

TLDR Version: 449 E Bay Ave. Great authentic Mexican food with modern twists, made in house, huge portions

English Version: Starting off, the ambience here is solo very Mexican, it's like being transported south of the border. It has papel-picado hanging all over the ceiling, it has Mexican flags, it even has a live musician playing guitar & singing Spanish songs. Plus the AC was out of order the night when we visited, so I had sweat dripping down my forehead within 15 minutes, just like in Mexico. ;-)

Right after we sat down, our server brought over a basket of chips & two kinds of dip, a black bean dip & another one that was dark yellow with red flecks that I thought would be cheesey, but turned out not to be, still tasty though.

As an appetizer, we ordere nachos with steak, which ended up being a plate of amazing nachos smothered in cheese, a pile of guacamole, a generous amount of steak strips, a few hot pepper strips, fresh tomatoes, cilantro, & onions (I know, those are not authentic Mexican cuisine, but they've definitely been very successfully integrated into their food culture). The picture shows how huge the plate was, and it could have been a meal for me, or two smaller people. (See picture).

To drink, we opted to split a(n) horchata (huge, see photo) in addition to water with lemon. I liked that our server did not simply plop down straws, but asked first, which gave us the option to decline.

As our main courses, my wife ordered the empanadas, and I ordered the tacos dorados. They both arrived with generous sides of rice & black bean sauce, a little bit of lettuce, a few strips of avocado, and surprisingly, a Mexican-seasoned Schnitzel (chicken-fried cutlet of pork?).

Version español (cortada): El ambiente es muy mexicano con muchas banderas de México, papel picado, fotografías, y música en vivo. No puedo explicarlo exactamente, pero hay tambien platas aquí que son un poquito diferentes y nuevas. Puedo prometerte que vas a gozarlo, perro es un poco caro, pero se vale el precio. No es tan caro como los restaurantes en LBI.

Todas las comidas que pedimos fueron muy frescas, delciosas y autenticas. Ven y probarlas...

We walked in and were quickly taken by the atmospere and bright Mexican decor that found its way beautifully to the colorful tables and chairs. As we were soaking up the ambiance we were quickly seated by their friendly and efficient staff. They have a very extensive mexican menu with the usual classics and quite a few special dishes especially fish varieties, they even are open for Mexican breakfast which I am hoping to try soon. They start you off with a big platter of fresh tortilla chips served with melted cheese and black bean dip, we had no trouble eating them all before out order was even taken. We ordered their Mexican style empanadas, I am very picky about empanadas, having had them all over North and South America, first off you get five huge empanadas with various meat and chicken stuffings, these were just barely ok, greasy and not much flavor to their fillings, very odd for a Mexican kitchen. We then went on to have the Carne Azteca, which had a piece of thin steak, Mexican sausage grilled with onions and served with pico de gallo, guacamole and an ear of fresh corn on the cob. This plate was tasty but the meat was overcooked and somewhat on the tough side, for our other meal we had the steak fajitas which were huge and with all the usual accompaniments, unfortunately the steak strips were tough and chewy, the large homemade corn tortillas that came with it were excellent. Portions here are phenomenal and you will probably be taking food home. We would have loved a nice Margarita to go with the ambiance but it a BYOB establishment. I would have liked to have given this restaurant five stars but the food weakness’s made it difficult. I definitely plan on coming back and trying some of their interesting specialties and having a classic Mexican...