i would like to start this with referencing the high rating on this place. i use urban spoon often and find the ratings to be a great indicator of what people feel about places. that being said my experience was not up to standard. last night we went to maria's for dinner. the building was nice and clean and we were greeted by a very polite hostess. she was excellent at managing multiple people at the door and the minimal wait to seating was very smooth. we ordered both appetizers and dinners, the tostones, the meat stuffed sweet plantain and the cubano quesadilla were the most amazing things. dinners we had the chicken and rice along with a smothered chicken and shrimp. thefoodwas fresh and flavorful, came out hot and enjoyable. if i could rate thefoodit would be a 5 outta 5, the problem was the service. it was terrible. it took 20 minutes from when we sat and ordered drinks (sodas) for them to arrive. my server alex was knowledgable with the specials but completely inattentive, took a half an hour from ordering ourfoodto get our appetizers and 10 minutes from getting our appetizers to get a refill of our very empty glasses. to be exact our server never refilled our glasses, i had to ask the busboys to get refills which still took time. the servers would come around after the full glasses were dropped and were useless. from when we finished our appetizers to our meal was another 20 minutes and the drink refill delays were the same throughout the remainder of the evening. granted we were there for 2.5 hours, i had 3 glasses and the 4th arrived as i was getting up to leave. if i could rate thefoodseparate of the service it would be a fairer decision:food5, service 1. the 1 is for the hostess.