I came here with my family for my dads birthday a few days ago. My dad picked out the place, after he remembered having it months ago and enjoying the food. When we walked into the place it was pretty empty, probably only a couple tables other than ours were taken. The ambiance was ok, though the restaurant was pretty dimly lit. It didn't help that a couple lights were out by our table as well.
We started out ordering a few Mojito's and a margarita. The Mojito's were ok, but they took a long time to come out and had barely any alcohol in them. Also, my sister tried to order a glass of Cabernet, but apparently they didn't have ANY at all.. We had already started off a little awkwardly at Alegria.. but pushed on.
For the appetizers we got the Tapas and what was described to us as "spanish bruschetta" (can't remmeber what it's called). They were ok, nothing special. The bread used for the spanish bruschetta was ridiculously soggy though. I passed on both the appetizers, because I personally found them to look not very appetizing..
When ordering our entrees, we experienced an extra awkward experience. We had two vegetarians in our party, my sister and my mom, and after looking over the menu online we figured they'd have no problems subbing in veggies for some of the meat items on the menu. When they tried to order some of the other dishes with no meat, the waitress said she would ask the chef. When she got back, she said the chef refused to change the item because, and i quote, "It wouldn't be good like that." After this happened with at least 4 or 5 dishes, they finally settled on ordering the vegetarian lasagna since it was literally THE ONLY choice they had.
Ordinarily I wouldn't have a problem with Chef's saying they like things certain ways, but when a vegetarian can only order one dish off an entire menu, I feel like that is an issue.. Additionally, armed with knowing the chef liked to make his items a certain way, the rest of us were excited to see how good the meat items would be.
Anyways, I ordered the Enchiladas con mole. Also ordered on our table was the pollo con mole, a salmon dish, along with the veggie lasagna. Im not much of a pescetarian, but those of us that did eat the fish thought it was cooked very well, and tasted pretty good.
Unfortunately, the rest of the dishes were extremely bland, and just terrible in general. My enchilada's had very little cheese in them, and had huge chunks of chicken that tasted like frozen chicken cooked without seasoning. We ordered two plates of the pollo con mole, and they both tasted different. Both of them were bland, but one of them was cooked well while the other one was overcooked and stringy. They both tasted like frozen chicken. Meanwhile the ONE veggie dish they had available was equally disappointing. It had a very overpowering sweet flavor, one that you don't really expect or want in lasagna. The only dish that got finished was the fish, and the rest of our dishes had plenty of food left on them. I left at least 70% of my food on the plate, because it really was that terrible.
After absorbing the stubborness of the chef through our waitress we were expecting at least halfway decent food (especially at $14-$20 a plate!), but all the dishes were terribly bland, and really boring in general. The one exception being the fish.
I don't usually write reviews this long, but this place was so terrible that it deserved it. If this place is going to have one saving grace it was our waitress. She was nice, patient, and very accomadating despite the difficulties from the kitchen. Needless to say, I won't be coming back to this place. Their cheapest dinner entree was 13 bucks, and the portions were insanely small. Not worth the money, not worth the time. read more