La Tolteca Mexican Restaurant — Restaurant in Wilkes-Barre Township

After hearing reviews from many of our friends and relatives, we tried this restaurant today for the first time.

We arrived at 5: 30 pm and were quickly seated.

Our waitress came to our table and appeared to have an "I don't care" attitude. After watching her interact with some other guests who had purchased alcohol, it appeared that she was much more friendly with those guests than she was with us.

I ordered a Coke and my wife ordered a water. We did not order any appetizers.

My wife had to ask our waitress twice for the white dipping sauce for the nachos.

My wife ordered the Texas fajitas, and I ordered burritos.

Other guests had come in after us and had received their food before us, at this point was roughly 45 minutes.

When I questioned the waitress as to why it was taking so long, and why other guests that came in after us had gotten their food before us. She had told us because we ordered items from the grill. It appeared that those guests ordered either fajitas or enchiladas as well.

We told our waitress that we didn't think it was going to take so long to get our food, so we would appreciate it if she could bag it to go.

When the food finally came out, she asked us again if we wanted to eat there, and we told her that we didn't because of time constraints.

On the way out the door, we expressed our dissatisfaction to a female near the front desk.

Instead of being apologetic for us having a bad experience, all she wanted to do was make excuses.

First, she said that she looked at the ticket and it was created at 5: 41 pm. She is correct, it was created at that time, roughly 7-8 minutes after our order was taken and 10 minutes after we walked in the door, and we were immediately seated.

She also stated that this is not a fast food restaurant. We are well aware of that, and have eaten at several fine dining restaurants and have gotten served our food much faster.

I explained to her that having worked in two local restaurants as a manager, this type of wait time regardless of whether it was a grilled item or not was unacceptable. She then tried to explain that there were others ahead of us, but would not address the fact that there were also others after us that received their order before us.

We told her this was our first time there, and it will be our last.

I don't know if she held a managerial position or what her role was in the restaurant, however the correct thing to do would have been to apologize for the unpleasant experience, ask what they can do to make things better, and invite us back in hopes of making things right.

The total time from when we walked in the door and were seated to the time that we actually received our food was around 50 minutes.

When we got home, we ate our food. The steak in our burritos and fajitas were like shoe leather.

The chicken burrito and chicken fajitas were very good. Also, the refried beans and rice were very good as well.

FRIENDLINESS - 3 CLEANLINESS - 9 SPEED - 1 VALUE - 2 QUALITY- 2

OVERALL...

My family and I eat at this restaurant at least once a week if not more. Through the years there has always been good service and bad service, tonight reached an all time low. When we asked our server for one additional salsa, she informed us they can only bring out two, even though she knew we liked their salsa. She refused to bring out 3. (Note: their salsa are only half filled when they bring them out.) Then our daughters food comes out on a broken plate, dried up beans, had dirty fingerprints on it and there was sour cream all over the plate (she had Mac and cheese). When the waitress finally came over, she growled at the fact that we had an issue. After some wait for them to return with new food for my daughter, she begins to eat her food, and what does she find, inside her rice was a piece of styrofoam. After that our appetite was lost, we requested to speak with the manager. We tell her about the issues and showed her the piece of styrofoam. She stated, she knew what it could be from (the To go containers for salsa). She continued to tell us they use them to scoop stuff. We said, it shouldn’t be in the food. She argued that it wasn’t a big deal. I told her it is, when it’s in our food. When I asked would she want to eat this, she said, she wouldn’t mind eating fluffy styrofoam cause she’s in the business. When I said, you wouldn’t mind it, so I should expect my 12 yr. old to eat it? Are you serious, how is that ok? Not to mention, you served her food on a broken plate 1st. How do I know, there was no broken glass in her food, since you feel it’s ok to serve styrofoam with your rice? IDC who you are there shouldn’t be styrofoam in anyone’s food! Maybe this place needs to have the Health Department come and to complete a surprise inspection! Wonder if they would fail again like in the past! Shame on them for the horrible service and items being in our food! Manager needs a good class in customer service. Obviously from reading other reviews there is an issue with your management and complaints. Let me just add that we paid in full for our meal! Nothing was given to us or even offered to us for our troubles! Never again will my family be back all consumers watch your food before you eat it especially...

Well, where to start. First off, my girlfriend and I went there with her friends because they've gone there quite a few times and they know I love Mexican food (bein' from Northern California and all), and we ended up waitin' close to an hour to be called, I went in there to check on the status of our reservation, they asked me to re-sign it, I declined and said I had already done so, and I noticed people above and after us had already been seated. Then, we ordered and all that fun stuff. Well, no joke, my girlfriend told me "My food's almost cold, it's like lukewarm" I told her, "Mine's cold" we had waited close to 20 mins for the food. I then samplednthe steak because, let's face it, somethin' was off. Indeed the meat was off, it tasted like it was cooked at some point, put into a refrigerator, reheated on a hot plate in a microwave, and then placed in a warmer all day. There was no seasoning, it was tough, dried out, and hard. I told my girlfriend that, had her try it, she agreed it wasn't fresh, tried her friend's steak for the fihitas, and wow wouldn't ya know it; night and day difference! I told the server my complaint, he relayed it to the chief and the Chief asked him to tell us, "Well, we're really busy here tonight so..." Busy enough to give me hours old and reheated steak? Yeah, so busy. The server ended up chargin' my girlfriend's friend for both of our meals and chargin' me for mine and my girlfriend's meal. Oh, and they never comped me for the meal that I didn't even get an eighth of the way through. The only thing okay'ish on my plate was the refried beans and even those tasted canned (no seasoning, slimy no salt). The best thing out of that expierence was my freakin' 34 ounces of beer because, let's face the facts: ice cold beer has never broken my heart. They all insist they've never had a bad expierence, be that as it may, this was my first and I was pretty disappointed. Where does a guy gotta go to get some actually authentic Mexican food...