ESPADÍN — Restaurant in Temecula

Ok we cannot comment on the food because we left before we ordered due to the extremely slow and rude service. I was not in any particular hurry other than having a 3 year old and 9 month old in tow so am super disappointed that this was the issue. The place looks beautiful, A+ for decor, ambiance, seating, location, and cleanliness...The issue was service. I was so excited to try this place due to other reviews, my love for all things south American food, and I followed on IG and loved their presentations. It was short lived. We sat down outside immediately (which was great) but then sat... and sat...and sat until someone put chips and salsa on our table and left without asking drinks or offering water. we then waited for our server from 12:12pm (yes it was prime lunch time but it was a Monday and not busy at all) when I ordered a water, juice, and guacamole until 12:44pm when the guacamole came out with no drinks still (only know times because my husband and I both work so need to keep each other up to date on locations for meetings, kids, etc). I let the woman know who brought out the guacamole that we had not gotten even water yet for the table and had been waiting and she just looked annoyed at me...The waitress brought out the water and kids juice at 12:50 and at 1pm I still had not ordered because our waitress said she would be right back... My kids were being patient but I did not want to sit there for another hour to wait for an expensive salad and some rice. The guacamole was not amazing either so for $10 was super unimpressed. As we were leaving, asked the waitress to please refill my toddlers apple juice in the to go cup (warm day) she left with the cup and never returned. A male then came to us as we were now standing waiting to leave and the waitress ignored us and the male told us he could not find the apple juice. ??!! We paid our bill and left. Never will be back and it is a shame because we love Old Town and bring our family to numerous places downtown to eat when they visit and my husband does business over meals...

Wifey and I went here for the first time on 10/8/17 around 6pm. We were really excited about having a Mezcal restaurant in town when this first opened. Chips and salsa were good, the short rib tacos were good, my wife's carne asada taco had too much sauce on it, and the guacamole was lacking something. Our original waiter left MIA about halfway through our meal without saying a goodbye or anything of the sort :( If it was just this then the rating would be three star, however, at about the end of our meal this belligerent jerk at the bar was being completely racist and loud to one of the bartenders(who I later found out was the manager and not a bartender) he ended up leaving because his daughter had enough so my wife and I were able to enjoy at least some of the ambiance without the fool being there. Right around the time our check came to us the belligerent racist dirtbag came back, grabbed two drinks from the bar top that were clearly someone else's and sat back at the bar stating that "he would pay for them". I was shocked and appalled that the staff did not grab the drinks back and kick him out.

The worse part of the night was when I was talking to the manager (the one who I thought was a bartender that was receiving the racist remarks) about the drunken racist low life, that "they should take his drinks away and stop serving this dude alcohol. The people behind us left without paying for their food and looked visably upset". His reply figuratively punched me in the gut. "This man has crossed the line, unfortunately we did not continue to serve him drinks, he stole them and is paying for them. This is the first time we have had anything like this. He has been paying a lot of money tonight and we are doing our best to deescalate the situation." I shook his hand and told him " I believe you but you are handling this the wrong way my wife and I will never come back here"

Lesson learned: as long as you are dropping serious money at this place, you can be as racist and drunk as you want to.

Thanks for the...

We've been mostly avoiding the restaurants in downtown Temecula because they've all been crazy busy lately. But on our way home from Del Mar today we decided to take a chance and stop in for a quick bite. It was a little busy but because we'd arrived late we avoided most of the crowd.

We hadn't been in for a while and our eyes were way bigger than our stomaches. We ordered the ceviche duo and we're blown away by the large portion. Most restaurants charge so much for small servings of subpar ceviche. That was absolutely NOT the case here.

For dinner we tried the birria tacos and the lobster enchiladas. Both were amazing, but we were stuffed before we even got halfway through our orders. Fortunately that meant we had delicious leftovers! (Unfortunately I was so pulled into the meal I forgot to take pics of our main courses).

For any mezcal lovers, they have an extensive selection. I tried the Mal Bien 80 proof and it was clean with a nice smokey burn at the end.

It seemed they were short-staffed because I heard other patrons complaining about their waitresses disappearing for long stretches but we were served by the bartender, who, despite being very busy, was always attentive, polite, and friendly. Good dude.

This was our second visit and it just reinforced our love for...