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| - The silver couch is *awesome*... it's all downhill from there.
Our first impression of this place was good - the awesome couch,nice henna inspired painting, lit up tables and cool punched metal lamps. It's eclectic but it works, mostly. The Mexican blankets covering two of the tables had me scratching my head, considering the attention given to the cool, curly silverware, plates and nifty conversation-starter cards on the tables.
But I don't go to restaurants for the decor. Reading the menu, I thought the food sounded interesting and a different take on Mexican. Somehow, that this is a vegan restaurant totally slipped by us. I didn't see it on the sign or on the menu. When the waiter told us that anything with "queso or chorizo" would be spicy certainly didn't lead me to believe it was vegan. I have nothing against vegan food, but I do like to be told the truth about what I'm getting. The menu has the words "queso" and "chorizo" on several items and they don't say anything to indicate soy or other faux food products.
We ordered the Nachos de Cine, tacos with roasted chiles and tacos with mushrooms. The nachos were an incredible rip-off for the price, which I believe was $7, perhaps more. It was literally a salad-size plate with corn chips that had about three different sauces squeezed on them. I kept expecting a chunk of something or other, but it's so dark in there I could hardly see what I was eating. The only non-sauce things on the plate aside from the chips were two jalepeno slices. $7.00... for real??
The roasted chile tacos were ok, but the corn tortillas were pretty greasy. The mushroom tacos had the same issue, and I really couldn't find the mushrooms amongst the potatoes and shredded cabbage and more spicy sauce. There were 2 small to average size tacos and no sides for $7. Again, not worth the money.
As if all this were not enough, our waiter was clueless beyond belief. He was clearly not acquainted with the menu. Although we only ordered 3 food items and one drink, he had to come back and ask again because he couldn't remember what we ordered. When he brought the food to the table he told us he didn't know which was which. He never came to check out how it was.
When we were done, he brought the check - which was incorrect. He had forgotten to charge us for the nachos. Even though they were terrible, my boyfriend was concerned that the waiter would be made to pay for the mistake so he pointed it out to him. He had to explain it three times before he understood. Then it took him another 15 minutes to bring back a corrected bill. There were all of 2 tables in there at the time - one was us.
We saw the woman who from some internet research we presume to be the owner. She never came over to either our table or the other to see how we were enjoying our dinner. We left feeling like we'd just eaten at a place run by some clueless people "playing restaurant". Reporting from the New Times (found after our visit) of this establishment serving alcohol after hours without a license did nothing to improve our impression of the owner's integrity either.
We're always excited to see new eateries in our downtown neighborhood and are happy to support the good ones, but this is not one of them.
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