| rev:text
| - Esmeralda, you did me wrong girl.
I want to preface this review by saying that the pupusas here are delicious. With that being said, I will never return here because the service was terrible. I'm very sad that I'll never eat those pupusas again, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make. RIP Esmeralda's pupusas in my life. Read on about this tragedy.
My friend and I were on the way to a museum when we stopped for what we thought would be a quick bite to eat. The museum we went to is fairly new and I wanted to get there when they opened and get in line before it got too crowded. We saw this place was just around the corner, so we were like "F yeah we want pupusas!" so we ended up here.
Upon entering, it didn't look too crowded for a Saturday around lunch time, yet we waited for a few minutes to be acknowledged. A woman finally saw us and told us to sit whenever. Okay! So, we chose a booth in their lower level seating area and the menus were brought really quickly. That was, I thought, a sign that we would be able to get our food quickly and leave. Wrong! The waitress came back about ten minutes later to take our drink order and we ended up ordering our meal to speed things up. We ordered two horchatas and two pupusas each. Easy.
The waitress came back quickly with our horchatas(no water offered) and chips and salsa. Horchata was good and as expected, the chips fine and the salsa super watery(maybe that was supposed to be our water?). We were pretty damn hungry so we were into the chips and super watery salsa that dripped all over the place when you tried to scoop some up. Anyway, the chips vanished quickly and we were left with an empty basket and salsa drippings all over the table. We chatted for what seemed like forever until we started checking our phones for the time. It had been about 45 minutes and no pupusas, no offering of water, no refill on the chips.
One waitress quickly walked passed our table and said our food was coming. I thought maybe directly from El Salvador and that Esmeralda had made the food herself. I was still holding onto hope for an experience turn around. Ten more minutes passed and just as I flagged a waitress down, out came our food. Okay. No offer for refills on our nearly empty horchatas, no water offering either, but she did take our empty sad chip basket away.
Now like I said, the pupusas were so good. I ordered a cheese and a chicken one and they were both amazing. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. The dough was thick but the filling was a plenty, so there was a nice ratio. Piping hot and super satisfying with the curtido on top. Soooooo good, but were they nearly an hour's wait good? Maybe without the sucky service.
I flagged down the waitress once more for the check because we had to go. I let my friend have the last sips of my horchata since she was practically choking and we had no drink left. The waitress said I needed to pay at the front, so I went up to the front area and waited for the group ahead of me to pay. I also noticed another waitress ringing up another party on the other side of the counter and he was complaining about the long ass wait for food, so it wasn't just us. I thought "maybe just a bad day" and proceeded to get my total(about $12) from the woman at the register and hand her my card. "Declined". Nope and I told her as much. She tried again. "Declined". So, this annoyed me obviously, but I remained calm. I explained that it was not declined but she could try another card. That didn't work either. She tried one of her own cards and that didn't work. Yeah, not declined, yo.
So, we find out the credit card machine is having issues. I have no cash, so I asked if she has a manual credit card machine(you know, the old school carbon copy crunchers?). She said no and runs off to check the power or something at the far wall. I stood there a bit dumbfounded for a few minutes because this experience is bizarre. She comes back and tells me "It isn't working". Yep, got that. I said I could come back after I go to the bank later but I had somewhere to be. She tells me to go to the liquor store ATM a few doors down(and pay a fee? No.) My friend and I got into my car and drove off. Now now, calm down y'all because I did eventually pay(I don't mess with karma by being a heathen) by mailing them payment but I was not going to pay a liquor store ATM fee. Plus I was already late to where I needed to be after this jenky lunch experience.
To sum it up: Divine pupusas but I will never return. I did not feel welcome because the lack of customer service, the wait time was ridiculous, and I was genuinely put off by how the credit card machine issue was approached. Onto the next pupusa place.
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