Antojitos Latin Cravings — Restaurant in Tampa

So, I'm hesitant to pour my heart 🤍out as I'm a bit taken back by my experience and did not want to give a bad review. After much thought 🤔 I had to voice my experience, it wasn't bad, just "ehhh ok" . It was a mix of a yey 🤩and a few nays😒, one too many . As a Latina💃, whose father plays Bohemia style music 🎸at many restaurants, I've had my share of Spanish restaurant experiences. Spanish food, whether Caribe ( PR, Cuban, DR), or South/Central American, is mainly recognized as flavorful. So, breakdown of my experience; Parking 🚗 was ok, a little awkward, but appropriate for location. Walk in. They have a hot food buffet for ready to serve along with frituras or quick fried bites (chicharon, stuffed potato🥔, empanadas 🥟, ect). I decided that since I had an hour to my next appointment, I'd treat myself to a specialty small plate meal🍛. Quickly found a booth and ordered the small version of the "bandeja paisa" White rice, fried egg🍳, grilled onioned steak🥩. The server reassured me I wanted the full meal vs the small plate, I'm totally not a confrontational person, but I explained that I just wanted a quick light bite before my next appointment. She was nice, yet reassuring that the meal was what I wanted because it came with avocado 🥑 and a salad 🥗 so I reluctantly ordered the meal, knowing it would be too much, but satisfied that I would have any leftovers for dinner. (I'm all about getting recommendations from the staff, but this went a bit beyond). I am used to waiting ⏰️an extensive amount of time for Spanish places to bring food out... not the case here, my food was presented to me at my table super fast! Like lightning fast ⚡️So, yey? Well, the nay comes in where I wished they would have taken more time. Why? It was flavorless! 😶 Everything, I mean the steak, the onions, the rice ... after using the table salt & pepper to liven it up, I asked for ketchup! 🤦🏽‍♀️ Yup, I sure did. Even the chicharon was flavorless, which is mind-blowing 😳and dare I say, it almost impossible to have porkrhind be tasteless (I took it home to my airfryer and added my garlic seasoning mix). I am willing to go again and try it out as the place came highly recommended from a trusted source, and perhaps they had a different chef in hand? But it won't be...

This used to be one of the great place I love to eat Colombian food. I get the fact that we had they had to pair the menu down(I'm assuming because of the pandemic) but the service was not on par the way they were before. I used to brag about this place but now it will be a different story. Today service was horrible food we ordered bandeja de Paisa this dish should have came out to our table put together, but the way came out to us piece by piece the salad first and then at the end of the meal the chicharron was last to come.

When we complain they said that the waitress was new but the waitress blamed the kitchen staff... Either way the food should have came out the way we ordered it not piece by piece!

I understand that the menu need to be paired down but bandeja de Paisa is a classic you start taking things off the plate then it is not the dish you order. Raise the price if that's what you're worried about people will still order it because it's the original dish and wants to eat it .

People go to the restaurant to eat the original dish not because it's cheap, we crave it.

We wanted to buy other things from the bakery but we decided not to give them any more of our money.... Maybe we'll give him another try maybe not there's lots of other Colombian restaurants that's opening up...

Today June 19 I went to eat there with my partner. First we waited a long time for them to take our order, then the girl who was there was serving other tables and we were still waiting even served other people who came after us, when she finally took the order it was like that they want very unpleasant, my partner does not speak Spanish, he speaks English I speak English and Spanish so I asked for his order because it was clear that the girl did not speak English but that is not a problem because I speak Spanish perfectly, she did everything as if she did not want to serve us and honestly I do not know why we were never negative with her, we were talking about other things, this girl is white, slender and of course Latina with brown hair. It is worth mentioning that the place was not crowded enough to say that she was stressed, I have visited this place before and the girls are always great and serve us super well but this time it was not the same. Finally we waited for her to ask for the bill, she passed by our table and just didn't look at us, it was a bit unpleasant. As a comment if you don't like your job, quit and look for something different that will make you happy. By the way the food...