Review Chingon Cantina - Chatswood

I went last night and all I can say is that watching the wait staff was like watching a circus. After being shown to our table, we, and pretty much everyone else there had to fend for ourselves and fight one another for attention. We were not given menus so we had to take them off the table next to us when a couple just got up and left without ordering a thing. People were putting up their hands and literally grabbing wait staff as they walked past. We ordered two rounds of drinks without ever having the empty drinks cleared and had 3-4 wait staff walk past out table without clearing a pile of finished serving platters and scrunched up napkins. I think my 'favourite' part of the night was asking for small plates for our share platter, being told there are no plates and just 2 minutes later seeing the table next to us is being handed out little plates by another staff member. I've definitely had worse service... but my experience last night was not enjoyable. There was simply no organisation and no one seemed to be in charge. The only reason I don't give this 1 star is that the food wasn't bad, the corn ribs were great and cocktails enjoyable... although the Churros were terrible. The wait staff were friendly and seemed to be trying, but lacked direction and possibly experience. The bartender said this was a pop up that was three weeks in... based on my experience I wouldn't have thought it was opening night and a manager failed to turn up!

The service was awful - it took us a good 10-15 minutes to be able to flag down the waitress to take our order. It also appeared to be an issue for the tables next to us as well. We ordered the corn ribs, tuna tostadas, flank steak and 2 drinks. For some reason, only 1 of the drinks came out and it took us another 10 minutes to flag down the waitress to follow up on this - turns out she didn't put one of the drinks through. The flank steak was disappointing - it came out overcooked (not pink, as the menu states). We ate it anyhow (the chimichurri sauce helped block out the flavour of the meat) - when we got the bill, we discovered that the waitress put our order down as "well done"!! We were not asked how we wanted our steak cooked and we did not specify that we wanted it well done! The dessert menu looked tempting, but we were frustrated with how long it took to get the staff's attention that we decided to go elsewhere. A highly disappointing experience!

It wasn't a great experience at all and a huge waste of time!! They weren't very attentive, I had to flag someone down just to give us a menu. We waited around 40mins before I called someone to check on our order - we had no drinks or food at this point. The waitress came over and told us that she forgot to put our order in!! She had one simple job to do and that was a fail. As we left we overhead the waitress apologising to another table for the same mistake! Great reviews, poor wait staff. Never be back!

We booked for last night and were so excited when we got there! But as the night progressed and the service fell short, we grew increasingly more disappointed. I eventually just felt bad calling staff over and asking for things. At one point we had a collection of plates and beer cans and cocktail glasses on our table because they wouldn’t take things away as they brought new things over??? Really just became funny at the end, and a distraction from the food that actually wasn’t bad at all...

Unfriendly, poor service Ordered a coffee at the coffee bar. 2pm on a Wednesday. No one in line. The barista was doing something behind the bar- didn’t even greet me or say “hi I’ll be with you soon”. Because where you order for your coffee was quite hidden I walked out a bit to be seen by the barista and he said “Yeah... just wait there”, very rudely. Taking my order he was very rude “what do you want?” Another customer came and ordered after me. She tried to joke and make friendly conversation but the barista wanted nothing to do with talking to the customer. Didn’t even smile. He had an unfriendly demeanor the entire time. Coffee wasn’t great.. ordered an espresso. Good body and crema but the bean flavour was of cheap cafe. Very slow in getting my espresso too, even though there were only 2 of us ordering. Definitely not going back to support this unfriendly, poor service.

Flavourless food killed the ambience I was out on a date night with my husband when we decided to try this welcoming place that we walk past every other night. What should have been a fun night quickly turned out to be a a distaster when the food arrived. We orderd the jalepeno poppers, Ceviche, carnitas and the special drinks of the night. We got the ceviche (what my husband ordered) first which was odd. But as we didnt want to wait we shared the meal. This in all honesty was not bad at all. Then came the poppers and Carnitas together...after about 15 minutes or so. Hands down these were the blantast food we have ever eaten in our lives.The 2 soggy poppers that were on the plate lacked any sort of seasoning. We had to request for hot sauce to trick our mouths. The carnitas came with some rice, pickled cabbage and lettuce. The apparently slow cooked pork seemed like it was slow cooked in just water for hours. The bowl containing the pork was still dripping in water as we plated. Again not even salt or pepper was added to any of the dishes. The rice seemed like a soggy hot mess. The only saving grace was the orange cocktail that washed down as an apology to the taste buds. We were not only out of pocket by 100 after this but quite frustrated and shocked that people serve such blant food. It is really a disgrace to foodies and people who love to cook. Wil never recommend this place to anyone.

After reading the reviews (about slow service, but food reviews were all positive) I was a little hesitant, but we love mexican and dine in Chatswood frequently so thought we'd try it ourselves. Very pleasantly surprised. I think they've taken the reviews seriously, and both food and service were excellent. Tacos, quesadillas, kingfish ceviche were fantastic. We'll definitely be back with some Mexican and Cuban food loving friends. 5 Stars well earned.

The food is SOO GOOD!! The chorizo quesadillas which were fantastic and the octopus was unreal! Churros and a piña colada for dessert were a great way to finish it all off. Service was perfect- the Colombian girl in particular was so lovely and attentive. We cant wait to go back

Look, I personally don’t mind Mexican, in fact I enjoy Mexican....and so do my friends so while we rejoice in the new addition to Chatswood, we’re gonna have to give this place a hard pass...one of us even tried this place twice - and we are on less “friend-ly” terms now. <br/><br/>So the cocktails. Your definitely getting a premium cocktail here, and is it value for money, I guess? Look we enjoyed it....<br/><br/>But now let’s nose dive into the negatives...<br/><br/>The service, umm lacklustre at best? I mean we ordered three nachos. A server comes out with three nachos, places down two and then walks away with the other one. We tell him, we’ve ordered three and he kindly tells us this one is for another table. Okay!?! <br/><br/>The meals come out in piece meal fashion, orders definitely got mixed up as our guacamole and corn chips never made it to our table - like this isn’t rocket science...<br/><br/>Anyhow the food, was just meh. My beef ribs were dry and charred to a crisp. The nachos were covered with unmelted cheese, like who puts the chilli on top of the cheese and overall bland - apparently the avocado was also unripe so it made for a very chunky guacamole (unconfirmed) . Like just pour all the house chilli sauce onto it...and the salsa, well that was just tomatoes swimming in their own juices? If your gonna have premix the salsa at least drain the juice...do you like scooping corn chips into tomato juice? We didn’t...<br/><br/>Please just take the kitchen staff to the Orchard for Taco/Nachos Thursday, see what the competition is and then offer us something better...please!?! <br/><br/>We want choice...but your not exactly making things easy for us, wish you all the best for the next five months :) <br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>

Thank you!! Finally a nice place to drink and have food in Chatswood! We’ve been waiting for so long. <br/>The atmosphere is really nice, they are playing salsa which makes you feel like you’re in South America. The food was delicious. I had a kingfish ceviche and my partner had pulled pork tacos. <br/>The drink menu is very complete and has a cocktail for everyone.( fruity or not, creamy or not..).<br/>The service was at his highest. The guy who took our order helped us to pick a drink and knew was he was talking about. Please keep this place opened you guys are killing it!