Doc Martin's — Restaurant in Taos

Overall, I was very disappointed with my experience at Doc Martin's. I'm from Oklahoma and had brought my daughter to New Mexico to celebrate her 10th birthday. I had looked over the local restaurant's menus and settled on Doc Martin's for her big birthday dinner, even made a reservation two weeks in advance.

We visited the restaurant on Dec 21, 2024. We arrived about 10 minutes before our reservation, just in case, and were seated immediately. The hostess was sweet and friendly, looked at our reservation, and noticed we were there to celebrate my daughter's birthday. The hostess wished her a happy birthday and seated us. After that, it went downhill pretty fast. The restaurant isn't very big and (at best) maybe at half capacity while we were there. We waited over 15 minutes for a waitress/waiter to greet us. We ordered our drinks, an appetizer, and our meal (all at the same time). We ordered their chips, salsa, queso, and guacamole as our appetizer. It took well over 35 minutes for that to come out. While were waiting for the appetizer a family of 6 came in (this is 25-35 minutes after we were seated), and within less than 15 minutes of being seated they received their drinks and appetizers, which were just chips and salsa, but at this point, we had already been there for over 35 minutes. When we finally received our appetizer, the family of 6 received their meals soon after. I was really discouraged and disappointed in our appetizer because the queso and guacamole were definitely from a bag. The queso tasted like nacho cheese from a stadium, the only difference from stadium nacho cheese was this queso had green chiles in it, but the taste, color, and consistency were identical. The guacamole was just mushed-up avocado, but also something you find at a stadium or some quick place to eat. The salsa was good, super spicy, but still good, and had flavor, but the appetizer was not nearly worth the $16 dollars at all.

As for the meal, it took over an hour for it to come out. We arrived at 7pm and by the time we got our meal, it was already 8:20ish, the family of 6 was getting ready to pay and leave.... I ordered the steak, asparagus, and potatoes. My daughter ordered the stacked enchiladas that came with rice and beans. Her entire meal was not good. Her beans had no flavor and I don't think they were cooked all the way and her rice was very bland. My steak was good, undercooked, but still good, the asparagus was nice big pieces and cooked perfectly, but the potatoes were also bland, not warm, and seemed like they were from a bag also. The smoked juniper demi-glace was not impressive at all, which saddened me, because I was looking forward to it. The enchiladas were $22 and the steak was $42. The bill before tip was just over $96.... the meal and experience was not worth the $96... I still left a tip just over the 25% because the waitress was friendly, informative, and was constantly updating us on our meals and refilled our drinks in a timely matter. But overall, I would not visit there again, nor would I suggest going there for the price.

Also, after reading more of the reviews and seeing the owner's responses to the reviews, I'm honestly disappointed in that too. As part of my job, I work with entrepreneurs and small business owners, and the owner's response to the reviews is borderline inappropriate. You should never tell a customer their experience is "completely inaccurate" and should not respond with a half-apology. "we're sorry you had a bad experience but your opinion is wrong" is not taking ownership of the service you provided that day. Sometimes, restaurants just have a bad day, and the owner should validate the customer's experience and remedy the problem, not make it worse by responding in the way that they currently are. I hope management takes this seriously because they do have a great location, setup, and atmosphere, just not running at their...

My girl friend and I had brunch at this establishment earlier today. Mikaila our server was unfriendly, dishonest and quite frankly didn’t appear to be too happy to be there. When my friend request a straw for her soft drink, the server replied that there were no straws, when my friend asked if this included the entire restaurant/place, she replied yes. Towards the latter part of our meal I noticed 2 table across from our table had straws. When we questioned Mikaila regarding this, she confirmed 1 table brought their own straws (my assumption) however she stated the other table had “purchased their straw for 50 cents”. When we asked why we hadn’t been offered this option she stated it was because we didn’t ask. Once we reminded her that my friend had asked she then changed her response to state that it was because they had a different server. I’m guessing all patrons aren’t entitled to the same service. I asked to speak to the restaurant manager, of which Mikaila sent the bartender over, but not before she spent a few minutes most likely telling him “her side of the story” and I watched her from our table. When the young man identified himself as the bartender & responsible for our section I asked again to speak to THE restaurant manager. Savanah came over but not before the bartender with Mikaila in tow, also went to report her side....Savanah approached very friendly and once we started to voice our concern or complaint, one of her first responses was “she did offer you a straw.” I advised her once again that not only did Mikaila not offer, which we didn’t expect, when we had asked we had been told there were no straws anywhere in the restaurant and that the reason the other patron had a straw was because they had asked & paid for a straw with a different server. Savanah proceeded to state that this didn’t make any sense and was in true because they didn’t sell straws, that as long as a patron asked they could get a straw. Savanah again insisted we must have not asked. I asked Savanah if she was implying we were liars. Savanah responded no but that none of what we were saying made sense to her. It really felt like a no win situation voicing our concern so we stopped. Savanah stated she would talk to Mikaila (which I highly doubt since she didn’t seem very interested in what really happened or genuinely apologetic for the situation). Savanah might have said “sorry ladies, I will get you a straw” of which was unnecessary since our plates had already been cleaned up and we had already paid our check. My opinion. Spend your money somewhere else. My girlfriend lives in Albuquerque and frequents Taos. I am visiting from N. Texas (Dallas area). I’m getting married here next summer. I guarantee no one in my wedding party or any of my guest will give this place our business when there are other choices who probably are more interested in the patrons than taking the side of thier employees when it isn’t warranted. I’d recommend you...

The business model here is very strange, half of the restaurant is available by reservation where they seem to have great service and allow you to sit in hand selected furniture from DWR, while the other half is very much the opposite where the wait staff treats you like you are bothering them and does not even acknowledge you exist for extended periods of time and it seems like it’s maybe intentional (like “oh you didn’t make a reservation? Feel free to sit in this crappier part of the restaurant and get treated like you don’t have enough money to be here”).

Whether you sit in the nice side, or not so nice side, the food prices are the same (roughly $30 per dish and $20 per drink).

Our experience included sitting in the non reservation side.

Despite there being 4-5 servers for about 12 tables, nobody even acknowledged us for the first 20 minutes we were there. While we looked around we noticed this was happening to quite a few tables. Finally, when were acknowledged it felt as though we were bothering them. They gave us menus and we once again were ignored for closer to 25 minutes. They finally took our order where we ordered drinks and food all at once to hopefully get things going. It took them about 15 minutes to bring us waters and about 25 minutes for the margaritas we ordered. About 35-40 minutes after our food was ordered it showed up. They did not bring napkins or flatware, then ignored us for another 15 minutes. We ate what we could with our hands until we finally got someone’s attention and asked for napkins and forks. It took them 15 more minutes to bring those.

The menu was much different than the one online. Despite the website and menu saying they have vegan options, there was not anything on the menu that seemed to be available to be made vegan so we went the vegetarian route. Still, we were served pork rinds with our “vegetarian” dish even though we asked for it to be vegetarian.

It was a very strange experience, it wasn’t particularly busy and it was VERY expensive. We ordered two appetizers and two drinks and it was $75 before tip. Maybe if the food wasn’t so expensive, it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but even so, the service...