Cafe De La Paz

Owner was great at fixing a miscommunication we had. Very straightforward, amicable and respectful.
They try hard and will probably succeed regardless of glitches described further.

I was entirely underwhelmed by the food and service at Cafe de La Paz. Went in for lunch, excited to get some traditional South American cuisine. But, the dishes were far from authentic. Rather than incuding dishes that were traditional to particular countries, the cafe features a mish-mashed variety of hybrid dishes that are vaguely South American. One might say this is pan-South-American cuisine. This need not necessarily be a bad thing. However, the combinations of ingredients seemed uninspired and overall the meal fell flat. Nothing was terrible, but nothing stood out either. Also, despite a relatively empty restaurant, the service was painfully slow.

No stars! I have eaten here a few times before and put up with the slow service because of the good Latin fusion food...but no longer!

Last night, a few of my friends (4 people including myself) and I went to Cafe de la Paz for my birthday. At first, it took about 10 minutes for anyone working to even acknowledge that we were waiting for a table. Then after being seated we waited 10 more minutes for menus. By the time we were ready to order, we hadn't even been offered water.

While this was already a damper on the evening, we enjoyed our meals and sangria. However, the most exciting part of the evening was when we recieved our bill.

After the bill was placed on the table, our almost non-existant waiter returned 15 mins later to collect our cards (this being his 3rd trip to our table over the course of over an hour)-- he yelled at us for wanting to split the check--- loud enough to catch the attention of the other customers. He claimed that we should have "prepared in advance," and "it wasn't appropriate," but to be quite honest I didn't catch everything he said because I was shocked I was being so fiercely scolded.

After this demonstration, my friend let him know that he would not be recieving a tip after his less-than-gracious lecture, and the waiter became extremely confrontational.

The waiter proceeded to stomp loudly down the stairs and called the manager to deal with us. He came back up the stairs, told my friend he was a "punk" and we didn't see him for the rest of the evening.

The manager was apologetic and handled the situation well-- but explained that our waiter was usually quite good and normally "friendly". The manager took off our alcoholic beverages for the evening (about $30 off the $100+ bill).

As a table of mature adults, I was appalled that I was being treated in such a way anywhere, let alone at a restaurant! Needless to say, I will not be returning and can't say the food was worth the treatment.

Went here last night with a group of 9 for a birthday party. We had a reservation, but waited to sit because the room is L-shaped and the waitresses didn't look around the bend of the L (there was no one sitting in that section of the restaurant, and it wasn't crowded). Eventually we were seated, but had to point out a couple waiting. They got seated but apparently didn't get served because they left 10 minutes later.

The food we had was good - the corn pancakes, the potato pancake (a little vinegary for my taste), and platanos for appetizers, and the salmon, the xim xim, the vegetarian dishes, the fish of the day, and the "Argentinean" BBQ were all reported as tasty; I liked the chimichurri sauce on the BBQ and the mango salsa that came with the fish. I liked the sangria but I think a lot of people might think it was too light - certainly it wasn't worth $34/pitcher. However the main problem was that the service was ATROCIOUS. Besides having to tell the waitress to seat another party, she seemed to have the order of ordering backwards, asking for our entrees before getting the order for appetizers. She brought the sangria almost ten minutes before she brought any glasses. More than ten minutes after she cleared the table, I waved her over to bring us dessert menus, and she brought the birthday surprise dessert - even though half our party was away from the table at the time! And then she didn't bring any utensils (which didn't matter because we sent it back for a do-over).

My friends, who had had the chocolate mousse before, said the consistency wasn't the same as usual but it did taste like chocolate fudge. The flan was pretty straightforward, nothing to write home about, and they were out of the crisp.

Of course as there were more than five of us we had to pay the gratuity. I wouldn't have left our waitress 10%.

We ordered sangria, empanadas, platanos fritos and a chocolate-kahlua mousse dessert. Unfortunately, all but the empanadas were extremely disappointing. The sangria was nearly filled to the brim with big chunks of ice (even though it already tasted like watered down grape juice). And, did I mention there was no fruit in the glass? How can they call this sangria? If I were the owner, I would be embarassed to serve this as "sangria". This is by far the worst excuse for sangria I've ever seen.

The platanos fritos (already fried, hence the name "fried bananas") sat in a bath of butter. As if the friedness and butter bath weren't enough, there was a heaping pile of curdling whip cream on top. My guess is that they were trying to cover-up the cardboard-like taste of the bananas. I have had platanos fritos in other restaurants and in Central America; Cafe de la Paz's platanos fritos do a disservice to this dish.

The chocolate kahlua was so unappetizing in it's presentation that we were fighting laughter when the waitress brought it to our table. I'm not kidding when I say it looked like moose scat. Again, with a heaping pile of whip cream on top. Let's just say it didn't taste much better than it looked.

Overall we were disappointed with the food offered here (however, please note we did not have dinner!). It's been a few years since we visited this restaurant but we were sad to see the quality of food and drink drop to the level that it is now at. There are plenty of other good restaurants nearby -- I recommend trying one of them instead.