El Catrin Mexican Kitchen — Restaurant in Swansboro

I placed an order over the phone around lunch time (1pm or so) for a family order that consisted of 3 plates. The guy that answered and took my order said it would be about 20 min, which was fine as we were driving from Emerald Isle back into town.

We got there close to 1:30 and my husband goes in to grab our food. 3 min later he walks out saying they didn’t put our order in. The guy at the front desk told him we never placed an order and my husband said yes we did, is there another Catrin in the area, which the guy responded no, so my husband goes on to tell him my wife placed it with my name and gave him exactly the order as I told him over the phone. The guy remembered and said oh yes and started to look in the system and since he couldn’t find it started to put it in right then and there! My husband told him wait a minute we are not going to wait another 20 minutes for the food to be ready, which at this point you would think the guy would tell him something other than “oh ok, sorry”.

Submitting an order wrong is one thing but telling us that it was never placed when he knew our order because he took it over the phone is so unprofessional and lack of any...

My wife and I couldn’t wait to try this place since so many people were talking about how good the food is. We arrived tonight at 8:00 went inside, and the place looked really nice. The sign said wait to be seated as you walk in the door, so like most places we go to we walked in and waited to be seated. No one ever even acknowledged we were standing there, many of the employees walked by us. There was a little booth at the front which we assumed was for take out. A group of 4 walked in and went up to the booth….hmmm were we supposed to do this? My wife walks up and asks the lady at the booth “ are we supposed to get on a list to be seated” the lady said No. then she walks over cleans a table and asks the group of 4 that just walked in to come be seated…..after we had been standing there for like 10 mins. Unbelievable we thought, and turned and left. We won’t ever experience the food here to rate it because the service sucks too bad to get to a table. Would do a zero for service...

Took my son and we both had the street tacos, steak and shrimp. I was a little surprised at how they were presented. Just meat on the tortilla. Very little fixin's and we had to ask for cheese. The shrimp tacos I got had just a small dish of diced onion and cilantro, a small dish of a sauce that frankly wasn't very good, and cucumbers and radishes. The rice and beans were delicious, as were the flavor of the shrimp, but it was just something I have never seen before. My sons steak tacos were presented the same but with a barely cooked small onion and a grilled jalapeno. The pepper was very flavorful, i used it on my shrimp.

Chips and Salsa were good. The salsa was tasty and they give you enough chips to feed double your table party.

Overall, I will go back but will try something different. Service was great and prices...