I so much wanted to give this place a 5 star review, and I am sure others will - deservedly so. I just can't do that after our visit.
Carlitos Place is in many ways a gem of Baja. It is along a dirt road off of a paved road off of the highway. We drove by it the first time (at night) since the road has no lighting (due to the storm a few months ago) and they have no sign from the road. No worries, we asked some locals and went back and found it.
They offer very fresh seafood, quality grade sushi, innovative dishes, along with ok drinks and a few boring non-seafood dishes. The entire restaurant is outdoors - basically a large palapa style roof over a concrete pad with tables and a nice bar. Most of the year the evening temps are perfect for this style of place. In Dec/Jan it can be cool at night so bring a sweater. In Aug/Sept/Oct it is very hot, so the ceiling fans will be needed, but may not be enough.
Their specialty is seafood. And for a seafood lover such as myself, I had a hard time deciding on what to get and ended up getting several of the smaller dishes and a small amount of sashimi. Everything I ordered was great.
Unfortunately, us seafood lovers are not always with people who also love seafood. My SO does not eat seafood - but to be clear, she chose this restaurant not me (that is true love). And while Carlitos has non-seafood dishes on the menu, some were not really appealing. My SO, who enjoys spicy food, ordered the chicken curry. It was one of the most boring and uninspired dishes I have ever tasted. I guess there was a little curry in there somewhere.
We ordered a few of the specialty cocktails and a couple glasses of wine. The specialty cocktails were interesting and had nice flavor, though seemed fairly weak. The wines were fine - mostly local Mexico wines, very few of which I have found that I really like.
The above would have generated a solid 4 star review from me with a strong encouragement for you to go there if you love seafood. BUT there is more to our visit.
The evening we were there (during Christmas high season) there seemed to be only one other table with paying customers - a couple at a nearby table. Additionally, there was another table with 7 or 8 persons sitting at it (8 when our drinks waitress would go join them, 7 when she was serving us), and sitting at the head of the table holding court was Carlito himself. I could ignore the facts that:
- the waitress would go sit at that table everytime she left our table
- that Carlito was sitting 15 feet away and never acknowledged us in any way - even though we were the only
- that our other waiter hovered behind us as if he was peering over our shoulders - he had nothing else to do
- that the people at Carlito's table were served drinks immediately while it took 5 minutes just to pour and serve our wine
But what I could not ignore is the loud streams of profane language that came from the other table all through our dinner - some of it from Carlito himself. Now don't get me wrong, I certainly drop my own share of F-bombs and other choice words, even sometimes in public, so I don't mind them on occasion. But this was continual, loud, and obnoxious the entire time. Us and the other couple glanced over a few times, but they clearly did not notice that we were bothered by this.
It started with just bad conversation but then degraded to a "serious" discussion of uses of the word "f#@k" - with Carlito participating actively in this discussion. At one point someone at the table pulled up a video on his device and played a video that went into glorious detail on the many forms and usages of the F-word as a noun, verb, and adjective. It then want on to conjugate the verb. They played this video loud enough to be heard throughout the entire outdoor restaurant and bar area. And while I have to admit the video is fun in it's own way (yes, I had seen it before), it was totally inappropriate in that setting and the owner of the restaurant himself participated in this obnoxious endeavor.
So this very unprofessional lack of respect for the paying customers in the restaurant as very off putting. If the seafood weren't so darn good, I probably would have given them a 1 star review. And normally I would write off such an occurrence as an off night, but I got the strong impression by the way Carlito and his court were acting that this is not a 1-time thing and that this type of behavior happens more than rarely.
Final tally - 3 stars
- Seafood dishes (primary menu items) - 5 stars
- non-seafood dishes - 1 star
- drinks/bar/wine - 3 stars
- Uniqueness to the area - 5 stars
- Service - 3 stars
- Professionalism of management - 1 star
Total of 18 stars / 6 categories = 3 stars read more