acajutla

worst dining experience...ever.. we arrived last night to the restaurant, very excited as we had heard great things about acajutla. once we stepped inside, we were very happy to see that almost everytablewas full, as this is usually a very good sign. unfortunately, this was where our good experience with the restaurant ended. the waitress appeared busy, as she was the only one working, so we did not mind waiting ten minutes to be greeted. when it came for her to seat us, however, she snarled "for two?" barely making eye contact, and walking away while she spoke. while directing us to our table, she stopped to serve another guest, then quickly gave us our menus and left. she did not return for 20 minutes. i wish i could say it was because she was busy serving others, however, by the time we were seated, a majority of the tables had packed up and left. ourtablewas the only one left of three, one of which was waiting for dessert and the other was just visiting with each other. we noted the high prices of the food ($2.50 for a side of sour cream - really?), but we assured ourselves that our portions would probably be large, and as it was authentic the food would be amazing and therefore worth the high price. i wish we were right. my husband ordered the acajutla plate at $18.99. the menu at the restaurant described a 6oz. steak, refried beans and rice, chimol, and two sausages. my husband received a plate of food that looked like it had been on the counter all day. there was no rice, his beans looked stale, and instead of two sausages, he received a sausage that had not been full cut in half. his steak was mostly fat, and tasted like rubber, which is a bonus because what was not burned of my enchiladas tasted like flour. my plate also looked as though it had been sitting out for a long period of time (the melted cheese had already started to harden, and the tortillas were stiff). my lettuce looked days old. i was able to eat the first one, however, the second one was burned so badly that the taste permeated through the whole enchilada and lingered in my mouth after the first bite. i was only able to eat half of my $15.00 meal. our waitress did not return to ask about our meal (i'm assuming its because she was aware of the quality) nor did she return at any time to offer us drinks. please be aware when you are choosing this restaurant!

service was friendly but very slow. ambience was severely lacking in charm but i would have forgiven that if the food had been good. only 1 person of ourtableof 8 liked their food. the shredded chicken in my tacos was dry and tasteless. on top of that, the portions were ridiculously small for the price - the mains were the size of appetizers. the bill came to over $100 for 4 mains and 5 appetizers (no drinks).

worst service i have ever had . if it wasn't for the food i would never go back to this place . they should really hire some new wait staff n tell them to smile for once . a couple came in n sat behind ourtableand never even got acknowledge , well they left after waiting 20 minutes . this place can do so much better with better service .

good food, bad atmosphere and customer service.. so, although the food is good, there is a saying that goes like this; good food goes together with a good customer service and the atmosphere.
although the food is good, every time i have been there either alone or with my husband, the waitresses there suck big times. they act like if they will give you the food for free, secondly, although the place is to cater the spanish community, it looks like those girls are forgetting that. when they see white people walking in, they will give them the royalty treatments, when they see a group of 10 people walking in, they will give them the royalty treatment, but when they see one single person or a couple, they don’t make a big deal out of providing a good service.
they even had a scandal the other day, in fact; i had to listen to that incident first hand news. they kicked out of the restaurant this poor lady just because she was canadian native, and she was not there to spend $100.00 dollars. how racist and repugnant can it get?
in top of that, the place is very tacky looking; full of mexican colorful nonsensetableclothes, colorful ugly looking papers on the ceilings, and so on.
when you walk in there, it mostly feels like you are walking in a room where there was a birthday party a year ago, and it never got cleaned up.
my advice to the owners is; just get rid of those frivolous, unfriendly, unpleasant waitress brats, and do a good decoration make-over on the place.

if you are planning on coming here i strongly advise that you don't. we went there as we wanted something authentic and us being from central america. let me tell you as soon we walked in we should have left, the server did not come to ourtablefor about 5-10 minutes. once she came there was no courtesy. we ordered our overpriced meals, there was no cutlery for us to eat once we got our meals, we had to remind them that we hadn't gotten all our orders and some of the food was not prepared to how asked for it (the meat was under cooked) when brought to the attention of the waitress she got mad and said "well maybe we can give you a small discount" (the discount was not given) and she was rude about it. when we were leaving the cook came out and was talking bad about us because we had complained about the food. i would say "save your money". el rancho is definitively the restaurant to go to if you want authentic and way better prices too.

the best thing i ever ate: mix pupusa. if i had to pick this city's best latin menu item it would be acajutla's mix pupusa. ($3.25)
tortilla stuffed with your choice of pork, cheese, refried beans or any combo.

this traditional salvadoran dish is also served with house-made pickled cabbage and spicy hot sauce which should both be piled on in abundance! it makes a perfect little appetizer which cannot be missed. i always choose the "mix" option to enjoy all three of the options. the tortilla is fried to a perfectly crisp-yet-chewy doneness and the contents inside are always hot and gooey and savoury and delicious. but it's the cabbage and hot sauce (and maybe a little avocado sauce) which really kicks everything up a notch. the cabbage adds a crunch of acidity which really balances all of the components out. it's a flavour party with everyone invited!


-----26 feb, 2010-----

3.5/5 for acajutla. acajutla is a mexcian and salvadorean restaurant that's located in a bit of a shady neighbourhood. but what can i say, sometimes you need to venture to some interesting places in order to try some great food.
we went there on a thursday night, and the small-ish place wasn't very busy at first. it did pick up throughout our meal though. the restaurant is very cute and viberant on the inside! the walls are painted a bright lime green, and they have colourful flags hanging from the ceiling. thetablecloths are also bright and authentic. they certainly have the atmosphere "right." the service was also incredibly friendly, our server was happy to explain anything on the menu and was very pleasant the whole time.

the menu is a few pages long and it was hard to make decisions with each item sounding so good!
the server explained what all of the specialty drinks were, and we were very interested to sample them! i went with the horchata (2.50$) which is a beverage made out of nuts and seeds - it was delicious! it was sort of milky and reminded me of a soy beverage. it was certainly a new flavour that i'd never tasted before.

i found that the appitizer round was actually fairly easy to decide on. a favourite, tortilla soup (corn tortilla, avocado & feta cheese in chicken broth - 6.99$) was on the menu, so i went with that. normally i'm used to this type of soup having a tomato base, so the chicken broth base was different, but certainly a welcome variation to a soup that i enjoy. the fact that there were actual pieces of chicken within the soup was an unexpected and tasty twist. all of my favourite flavours were present in this soup.
i also started with a pupusa (tortilla stuffed with your choice of pork, cheese, refried beans or any combo - 3.25$), which is a dish that i adore. i first sampled this item at a taste of edmonton (a food event that happens every summer in churchill square) and it's become one of the items that i look forward to the most. i chose the 'mix' option which is a combo of all three of the possible fillings. when you get your pupusa, you're supposed to add some spicy cabbage, avocado sauce and spicy sauce on top. delicious! it's a hot little package of flavours bound together by gooey cheese. i recommend that everyone tries this!

when it came to choosing my entree i was a little less decisive. there were so many choices, but in the end i went with a bit of an old standby, which was the mexican enchiladas (soft corn rolled tortilla stuffed with chicken & topped with spicy enchilada sauce & mozzarella - 9.99$). i'd say that this was nearly as good as any enchilada that i've had. the chicken inside was shredded and savoury, the sauce was tasty and spicy and the cheese completed the dish. it tasted very authentic. i was so full by this point that unfortunately i couldn't finish the whole meal, so i packed up the rest to take home.

the only problem with the whole dining experience was that we were working on our appitizers and still had plenty of food left, when our entrees came out before we were done. the server just crammed the plates onto ourtableand there was barely any room for everything. we were forced to quickly rush through the rest of our appitizers in order to get to our entrees before they started to get cold.
other then that everything was pretty great. i'm not sure that this is the best mexican joint in the city, but they certainly offer plenty of good reasons to give them a try.