The Gastronomical All Stars Dinner Club

This month we visited Guadalajara Cafe on 103rd St in South KC.  This is our second opportunity to try a Mexican restaurant.  For me Chips, salsa and margaritas are an important part of the Mexican experience.   Guadalajara far surpassed expectations with the margaritas, and were well below par on the chips and salsa.   Starting with the good, I consider myself a margarita afficionado, mostly because I really like them, and the margaritas are probably in my top 3 I have every drank.  The pitcher we had with Grand Marinier, were especially delicious.   Now the chips, were well below average.  Chips should be warm, thin and crisp and these chips were none of those.  The salsa was a little above average, but I personally prefer a smoother rather than chunky salsa.

The food I thought was very good.   I had carne asada and found it to be well seasoned and flavorful.  The beans were exceptional, probably the best I have ever had, but you can't go wrong when adding heart clogging lard to your beans.  I have had Mole several times, but have never cared for it,  the enchiladas with mole that Sara were very good and I would definitely order it, if I ever went back.

As good as the food was the service was equally poor.   Although I did not make reservations, and we had a large party, the restaurant was not all that full, and the time spent waiting for dinner was unacceptable.   Another issue was the inability of the waiter to split tickets, we had 6 different families at dinner, some did have cash and it made splitting the what each person owed, a pain and added a higher tip than what I felt was warranted for such poor service.

Even with all my complaints, the food was very good and it wouldn't take much for this restaurant to take care of it's service and billing issues.

I give Guadalajara Cafe a 3.5 based on the exceptional food.   I probably should have taken off another .25 for the poor billing practice and added gratuity.