One evening during my business trip, we were going to have a big group dinner. It was going to be total of 12 people, so I thought it was going to be a challenge to get a reservation for party of 12. Luckily, the restaurant of our choice was large enough to accommodate a reservation for 12, day before the dinner was planned.
They came with a high review, so I was curious of how this evening was going to be. They had a nice waiting area, with comfortable chairs. Since we had to wait for the rest of our party to arrive, it was nice to have a little waiting space where we could sit down.
The first thing that welcomes you other than the hostess is their huge bar. The bar was massive, you can only have this size bar if you have a very large restaurant. The hostess was very nice and polite, with lovely smile. while we were waiting for our group to arrive, she came over to see if we were already taken care of by someone else. I told her we were waiting for the rest of our group, and she told me that our table is ready whenever we are.
They have a few sections of dining space. Right behind the bar was a small dining area with high bar tables. Behind that seemed like the main dining area, with regular tables and booth seating. With large open space, they had a huge light fixture to match the space.
They had a cute little nook for a larger group of five or six by the staircase. I didn’t investigate the upstairs, I wonder if they have dining space upstairs too? The kitchen was alongside the right wall in this main dining area. Cool to be able to see the food being prepared.
All the way back is more dining space, really big and spacious. Our table for large group of 12 was set up here. They had several rectangle tables along the wall put together to create long communal tables.
The staffs brought out complimentary chips to the table. It came with a very small container of salsa. Not very easy to share… If you wanted any other dip, you need to order them. The staffs came around quickly to take drinks order and see if we wanted extra dip, such as cheese dip or guacamole.
I wanted some cheese dip, so I added an order of Queso Poblano ($8) for the table. It is made with melted chihuahua cheese, pepper jack, queso blanco, diced roasted poblano peppers, nopales, fresh corn. From the time they took the order to this arriving to our table, it took about 30 minutes. It arrived in a quite small bowl. It was very rich and creamy, so the amount we received wasn’t too bad. It was at nice temperature, tasty but nothing too special.
For drinks, they had good selections of wines, margaritas, and cocktails. They had several kinds of their own Margarita creations, and I chose Serrano Berry ($9) from the menu. It is made with fresh muddled strawberries & serrano pepper, tequila, with fresh lime juice. This one took about 40 minutes to arrive from when the order was taken. It had nice kick to it without being overwhelming. Not very strong, more like strawberry drink with a hint of tequila. Nice amount of strawberry chunks in there, but straw was too thin… They got stuck on the bottom of the straw as I was trying to drink, so I couldn’t drink from the straw after a while.
After everyone received the drinks, they took the food orders. I ordered an appetizer to share, Chicharrones ($9), made with berkshire pork jaw chicharrones with salsa verde, queso de rancho, served with handmade white corn tortillas. This one arrived about 30 minutes from when they took the food orders. I think you now know where I am going with this…
It was tasty and had good chunks of pork. The meat was tender meat with crispy skin on it which I enjoyed. Tortilla was warm and soft. It had a nice little kick to it, which enhanced the sweetness of the pork. It was quite tasty.
For main, I chose tacos from Tacos de la Casa section. It comes with homemade soft white corn tortillas, white rice, black beans, 2 tacos per order, served with habanero sauce on the side. I wanted to try more than just one kind of tacos, so I asked the server if I could order two different kinds of tacos, one of each, and he said ok. Great! I chose Camarones and Carnitas, which made my order to be $13 I believe. Oh, and it has been about one hour since the food order was taken before it arrived. At this point, it was getting close to two hours since we sat at our table… Anyways, I didn’t really read the menu carefully, so I didn’t realize it comes with rice and beans until it arrived to the table. The rice was super tasty, fluffy and had a little sweetness to it.
The Camarones tacos is made with garlic lime adobo marinated shrimp, green cabbage, jicama, tomatoes, mango, crema, queso fresco, cilantro. Carnitas tacos is made with pork carnitas, pickled red onions, chile de arbol salsa, queso fresco, cilantro.
The tacos were pretty big, bigger than I expected them to be. Well, the whole plate was much bigger than I thought it would be. The Camarones tacos was good, shrimp was plump and had nice cheese flavor that went really well with the shrimps. It didn’t have many shrimps, maybe total of three? It was refreshing with fresh veggies, but I wish if it had more shrimps.
Carnitas tacos was also big, but didn’t have as much filling as the shrimp one. The pork had crunchy skin which was nice, and had some kick to it. I like this one more than the shrimp one, it was more flavorful. Very tasty.
The sauce that came on the side was way too spicy, glad I didn’t just pour it on my tacos. Always good to check the level of spiciness before blindly pour it on your food.
As you read, service was very, VERY slow. And even thought they took forever to bring out the food, not everyone got the food at the same time either. So, the slowness was not because they were trying to serve everyone at the same time. All the staffs were all polite and willing to help though, but need to work on the capacity of serving large group. If you allow a reservation for a large group, better be ready to serve the large group. I can understand if we were at a tiny restaurant with tiny kitchen, where it would be a quite challenge for them to serve 12 people. But here, this is a huge restaurant with much more capacity. The food was good, but taking two hours to bring out the food should not be acceptable…
Meso Maya Comida Y Copas – 604 Main St., Suite 100, Fort Worth, TX 76102