Walked in. There is no sign indicating if there's a host or if it's seat yourself. No one around. Okay, so we find a high-top outside and stand by it. There seems to be one server working both inside and outside. Eventually we make eye contact and ensure we are okay standing where we are, she says no problem. The plan was to get drinks and apps. Order their house old fashioned and a spicy margarita. It was probably the worst old fashioned I've ever had, and I immediately mourned what we lost when South Shore Dive closed. Two of these things, if not three, have to be true: (1) The well bourbon is really crappy (which is weird, because there are plenty of good cheap bourbons, (2) the ratio was off, (3) there was no attempt to mix and dilute the ingredients. But it was objectively bad.
My wife's "spicy" margarita might have been worse. It was not a good margarita and had zero spice. (I am not being one of those people that is used to spicy things and so thinks it wasn't spicy *enough.* There was literally no spice.) Also, no salt on the rim. Just a bad margarita in a standard little glass. Worse, they charge extra to make it spicy. Ugh. I was not about to complain about $2 though. Perhaps I should have flagged down the server and let her know, but I didn't. That's on me.
The server never asked how our drinks were, so I did not have a chance to inquire anyhow. But the drinks were so bad that we assumed the food would not be good either, and we left.
That is my direct experience. The rest are my opinions from observing the goings-on and I am making inferences, although I think they are reasonable: The outside setup is weird. Poor use of space. There is very little outside that fits the theme of the restaurant. The tables are picnic tables. It's just kinda random--which is cool if you are a sweet dive bar, but less cool when you are aiming to be a cantina. The sole server was kind but perhaps needed a second server or better direction from management. One hiccup is that she did not seem--and no one seemed--to understand how one reserved a table. I saw some people told there was a wait, and then others came in after and got a table. Just seemed very amateurish. No sense of polish--or even just a set procedure. Making things up on the fly. I know the restaurant is new, but these are just mistakes that people who work in the industry can and should avoid from tip-off.
So, yeah, they had a chance to win over two people that live right nearby, but they didn't. We won't be back.
We left and went to Cafe Joelle. I had to laugh when I got an old fashioned there because it was so much better: one big ice cube encased in the standard old fashioned flavors. Such a simple drink. If you cannot make a decent old fashioned, you should not be bartending until you can. If you cannot make a decent margarita, you should not be a bartender in a self-described cantina. And if you cannot just do the basics right: People enter and need to be directed somewhere by a person or a sign; there should be a known process for how a table is secured; and there should be enough servers.
As-is, this place won't last unless the food is *insanely* good. But I don't think it's possible for a place to have so many glaring flaws yet get the food part--maybe the hardest part--right.
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