Don Luis Restaurant - Authentic Mexican Cuisine and Cantina — Restaurant in Virginia

Well we found 'Don Luis Restaurant' by accident passing by after going to the post office.

Since we moved from San Diego, CA to Virginia, it's been hard to find a great Mexican restaurant. We used to eat at our favorite 'Casa de Bandini' and just couldn't quite find an equivalent here.

So when we decided to stop at Don Luis', my husband ordered a Beef Burrito to go since it was too early for us to eat after a fulfilling breakfast that day.

Meanwhile I was impressed by the interior of the restaurant, so much so that I took a lot of photos. The artworks are beautiful and colorful with cool Mexican vibes in every corner. Also the bar is spacious and very nice and very stocked.

As we were heading out, the manager Martin introduced himself and talked to us for a while. We mentioned how we missed our favorite restaurant back in California, but we're going to try the burrito first and come back another time for a complete dinner experience. He gifted us with a delicious flan for dessert.

As promised, one month later, in October we stopped by for an early dinner.

They started to decorate the restaurant for Halloween and the place was still quiet as we were early -- we do enjoy being able to talk to each other rather than play on it mobile phones.

My husband ordered Flank Steak - Carne Asada Platter with Plantains.

I ordered Plato Azteca - Steak, Chicken and Shrimp grilled with Mexican sausage, topped with queso sauce.

For drinks we shared a large Frozen Mango Margarita.

In my opinion the food was good, the portions are small though in comparison. At least the steak was a good cut, without sinews.

My husband too enjoyed his dish and the food was good.

Martin the manager offered us a complimentary dish to try out.

Something he is testing: fried tacos, with a colorful side of rice and oil dip. In our opinion these tacos were already deep-fried - too oily.

I like crispy Tacos with grilled meat, cheese and fresh diced tomatoes with cilantro and a quarter lime squeezed on top.

Anyway the burrito we ordered before had rice: too much starch in one place. We prefer to taste the beans, guacamole, meat, salsa fresca and maybe cheese ... We shared our opinion with the manager.

By the way, the margarita was great! We could actually taste the Tequila - highly recommended!!

Dora was our waitress who was very nice and attentive. Always clean, nice makeup, cheerful. Unfortunately she was switched to another area of the restaurant unbeknownst to us, but we ended up being served by five different people. But I still prefer her.

Anyway the restaurant has potential, but needs to improve the menu with mouth watering dishes, melting sauce and cheese with flagrant aromas emerging from the cast iron kitchen.

By the way the patio needs a little more TLC with colorful umbrellas, nice decor, some banners, comfortable seating, some plants - it needs life added.

We'll come back again and...

Where to begin…

When your food is sub-par- cold chicken, old guac, old lettuce, and a misrepresented dessert. Finale: Managerial incompetence.

Full disclosure: Our waiter was very friendly. No issues there.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I presented our Don Luis gift card and the MANAGER needed help billing it out. First he asks me to download the app(though the card number and QR are right there), so I ask for the WiFi password and oblige. I showed him the same QR (now in the app) and the gift card number and asked, now out of our seat and standing over the bar, if he could just enter it into their POS to charge it. He gave me some excuse that it had to be received via email only. I explained the card was given to me via a Toast Tab link via text message and that I never got an email. He seemed annoyed. It gets worse: already disappointed in food quality (again, no knock on our waiter who was very polite and attentive), the manager now has the audacity to ask me to go BEHIND THE BAR WITH HIM to assist in billing out MY tab through HIS screen!! He couldn’t even log in without our waiter’s assistance. Wow. After selecting our table on the screen and payment option I see “GIFT CARD” right there on screen. It asks for the card number, which I directly read to him, and voila!! The tab is paid!! No “I’m really sorry about this, sir”, not even “Sorry about that”, etc. Nothing.

As for the desert, the Tres Leches was served barely below room temperature with an artificial strawberry SAUCE drizzled on top. The menu on their website says STRAWBERRIES. This was important to us to get real fruit and not some candy-coated liquid sugar out of a bottle. Dishonest…

It if isn’t already obvious, we won’t be returning. I hope this was this guy’s first night on the job (which I’d assume someone would mention if that were the case) because asking your customers for their help in charging their own tab speaks volumes about other aspects of any business.

Thank you, Don Luis, for providing an experience I can check off my short list of “Never Again” in the area. Clearly, corners are being cut on food quality and training alike. You should only receive one star for this but your waiter deserves...

I could tell from the start that our sever was new, so I gave him some grace. He never came back to check on the appetizer. It took him 10minutes to check on the entrees, both of which were cold (the plate was hot tho.) It was probably another 10 minutes before the lady manager came over and offered to remake. My husband didn’t want a remake, just a box to take his leftovers home (and eat it hot), yet they brought both of us new burritos, his in a Togo box. I asked for no cilantro be cause the first one was garnished with it and I scraped it off. They put No cilantro on top but now there’s a bunch inside. The first one didn’t have any inside. No one checked on us, two almost full plates pushed to the side and an empty soda glass on the edge of the table and no one checked on us. Finally server comes back with manager so I showed her the cilantro. At this point we’re done, we’ve been there over 1.5 hours so we asked for the check. Both burritos were on the check even after she told us she’d take my SO’s off the check. My burrito which I spoke to her about and she even took my uneaten plates away, was still on the check also. I’d have gladly paid for my second one if it had been made properly but it wasn’t and I’m not going to eat a burrito that tastes like soap. I told the server we’d pay for the drinks and queso. Waaayyyy too long passes before he comes back and tells us they took care of the check. Having no cash for the tip my SO went next door and got cash from the bank. He went back in to tip the server and the lady manager was yelling at the server. There were a few parts of the evening that were the servers fault, but lady manger handled the situation so poorly that she’s the one responsible for us never coming back. Lady manager had so many opportunities to make it right and have us come back and she f’ed...