EXPENSIVE, LOW QUALITY INGREDIENTS, AND BAD RECIPES - Luau is on a major street in CDMX, so you would hope it's a destination. You also probably hope you'll win the lottery one day. Save your money and throw it away on lotto tickets instead -- at least then you have a chance of ending up a winner.
The space itself is underground and vaguely Chinatown-themed. A bit gaudy, but not totally out of character for the genre. The staff was attentive and food arrived quickly, which unfortunately was the highlight of the meal.
Course after course was a disappointment.
The sopa de tallarín con huevo was essentially spaghetti in chicken stock (likely bouillon) topped with a fried scrambled egg. The wonton soup wasn't much better, served with two large slabs of dried-out, tasteless pork that were tough to cut and harder to enjoy. The wontons themselves were the worst part. Both soups were firmly one-star at $149 pesos each.
The rice arrived broken, overcooked, and pasty. Another one-star addition.
Then the mains.
The pollo agridulce came with exactly six pieces of chicken, served cold, sitting on an iridescent bed of what I can only guess were kohlrabi or broccoli stems. The color was unholy. At $250 pesos, this was another easy one-star dish. I actually felt insulted on this.
The chow mein cantonese was possibly worse. For $350 pesos, you get a pile of stems -- bok choy, broccoli, kohlrabi, cauliflower -- mixed with subpar chow mein noodles, all served cold. More of the same dry pork showed up again, mixed awkwardly with warm chicken and hot shrimp, all drenched in a gelatinous sauce. Serving stems and temperature roulette is also to me insulting.
To be fair, not everything was completely terrible. The res mongolian (hopefully Inner Mongolia province in China and not nearby neighboring country Mongolia) was serviceable and reasonably tasty, though still overpriced at $250 pesos. There was a ridiculous amount of leek and green onion relative to the meat, which itself was just decent. But nothing here will do much to save Luau from itself.
CDMX has extraordinary food. Do yourself a favor and find it somewhere else.
Happy eating from John Seeto! read more