Jen M.
Yelp
Here's the summary: decent food, terrible value for your hard-earned money - ridiculously overpriced for the tiny portions, and HORRENDOUS service.
It was my husband's bday last week so we decided to do a date night and celebrate with some friends. There were 6 of us total and I made reservations in advance. Hubby and I have been craving a good ceviche and everyone told us they had it there, so we were excited. They don't have menus online and when one of our friends inquired online, no one responded. So, we went in blind.
We asked our waitress (who was extremely cold and unfriendsly) about ceviche since it was no longer on the menu, and she said they didn't have it on the dinner menu but it is on the Chef's tasting menu ($75/person). So we asked if it was possible to order it as a dinner dish and just charge us what they were charging on the menu before they changed it - it was a cold hard NO. Her attitude was so terrible that it actually made it worse. Mind you - we were all very nice and polite. We spotted her walking over to the kitchen and talking to the girls in the kitchen who then looked over at us. They quickly looked away though as soon as they realized that we were looking right back at them. So... I can only imagine what the waitress said to them. 5 minutes later, the owner came over and took our orders, and she was a "little" friendlier. We asked her about the ceviche and she said no it's just not available at all, not even on the tasting menu. OK, well that makes sense then, although I wonder if she just said that so we would stop asking. Also, one of our friends never got her drink - they brought it over eventually but no apology whatsoever. Honestly, at this point, if we weren't with company, we would have just paid for the drinks and gone somewhere else for dinner. But, we decided to stay and give them a chance anyway.
4 of us decided to share food while the other 2 people shared their food. We ordered the "roasted camote" - basically just a fancy sweet potato for $12 - not worth it. The lechon con frijoles (pork belly) for $17, it was delicious and about the only dish that might have been worth the price. The potato with goat cheese was pretty good ($12), crab ceviche (16) which was NOT actually ceviche, as the definition for ceviche is "a South American dish of marinated raw fish or seafood". This was cooked crab and to be honest, it tasted like artificial crab, not even real crab meat. We also got the asparagus ($13), the beets ($15), the carrot with green goddess dressing ($13), and tamal ($14) - which was just a little blob of roasted pork inside a big corn bun. Think corn tortillas mashed up and formed into the shape of a bun - there was just a little too much bun and not enough meat. We ordered doubles of the pork belly and potato dishes, and also a couple of desserts. Most of everything we had was pretty tasty, but all of them were just ridiculously overpriced, especially the vegetable dishes. I have eaten at restaurants ALL OVER THE WORLD including notoriously expensive cities such as NYC, San Francisco, Napa, London, and Paris. But I have to say, Las Puertas was the most overpriced meal with the worst service we have ever had.
The entire 2.5 hours we were there - no one came to check on us. No one even looked over at our table even though they were passing by it all night long going between the kitchen and the rest of the tables, so we couldn't flag anyone down to place more orders. We had to quickly spit out our requests whenever they delivered our food or else they were GONE, and they looked annoyed and impatient the whole time.
The bill came to almost $450 for the 6 of us, and honestly, the prices don't matter to me that much as long as it's WORTH it. This entire experience - to say it was NOT WORTH IT is actually an understatement. We all left hangry, and will never be back. Maybe they had a better menu before but I will never pay $12 for a sweet potato or $13 for 3 carrot stalks again.
PS. Be careful of the bottle pricing - a glass of the cabernet was $12 but a bottle was $65! We did not realize this since all restaurants charge about 4-glass equivalent for the bottle, or cheaper. But nope, they upcharge you by $17 if you order by the bottle.