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| - We frequent the Village Square area pretty often. So when some friends of ours invited us out to Viva Mercado's, which happened to be one of my bookmarks, I couldn't turn it down. Sadly, the quality fell way short of what I expected after reading so many great reviews.
The restaurant itself, which sits in the farther SW corner of the center, is actually quite nice. It's a bit smaller than I expected just judging from the view outside, but there's still a decent amount of seating. On top of the bar and dining area inside, they also have a really cool patio area outside. Alongside a few tables, they have a neat family style, bar height fire-pit type thing that looks to seat about 10+. Since our visit was on a chillier night, we decided to sit inside, but if I were to return and the weather was nice, I'd request those seats. And for what it's worth, our party of 6 arrived just after 6pm on a Friday and got seated within 15 minutes.
Much like similar restaurants, Viva Mercado's has a pretty extensive menu. Several pages offer everything from appetizers to combo plates. They also have one of the biggest seafood selections I've seen from similar style restaurants, which I now wish I had ordered from. I ended up going with the Mulitas, which they serve basically like a big open face taco. They offer it with several types of meats, and I opted for the carnitas. Quality wise, I'd say they're just about a notch above Macayo's, which really isn't saying much. The meat was dry, the tortillas were stale and there was so much sour cream on top of it, that I could barely taste anything else. After picking through it, there was little flavor to anything else on the plate anyway. I'm also not a huge fan of the rice and beans they have, which just seems like those cheap heat and serve sides. The highlight of our meal was the complimentary chips, served with a side a fried jalapeños and onions. I ended up eating more of those than my meal.
For the most part, our service wasn't terrible, but it could definitely use some work. I ordered an iced tea that was obviously old and had been brewed a while back, so I just ordered a water on top of it that I planned to drink, but I never got it. That was a slight mishap and easy to overlook, but the biggest problem was with one of our friends who had a huge headache with his meal. He ordered a combo meal, which normally comes with rice and beans, but he requested no beans and double rice. When his plate came out, they gave him the rice and beans like it's normally served. He immediately told them that it was incorrect, so they took the plate back, but then brought out double beans and no rice. After having to tell them 3 times and sending his plate back twice, they still couldn't get it right and just ended up bring him a side plate of rice. Something so simple just turned into a huge ordeal.
Overall, if you're a fan of restaurants like Macayo's then you will probably like Viva Mercado's. But I am not, and Macayo's is actually one of my least favorite restaurants. So with food that is barely a step above that, and service that is lacking, I can't say I'll be coming back here anytime soon.
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