Beso

thewayofthearch · PostMay 06, 2008#162008-05-06T17:51+00:00

jlblues wrote:
TheWayoftheArch wrote:In this instance the quality we let slide, but for $17 bucks you need to bring some protein. I can go to niche and get a damn good entree for that.
Haven't been to Niche in a while huh?

I was there a month ago. And while a little more pricey, they have 3 entrees for $24 or less and the pappardelle pasta can easily be eaten as a meal for $14.

jlblues · PostMay 06, 2008#172008-05-06T18:20+00:00

^They have three entrees for $24, and I wouldn't say any item on the menu at Niche could be eaten as a meal, but then I'm a big guy.

1000washington · PostMay 21, 2008#182008-05-21T02:48+00:00

I tried Beso for the first time last night. Was HIGHLY unimpressed.

First, the service was abysmal. The server couldn'tve cared less that we were there.

Margaritas weren't bad, especially for $3 each.

The meals, when they finally arrived, were really bad.

In a city where we are very fortunate to have some really phenomenal casual Mexican restaurants, the food here is a complete shame.

The first strike was a pretty major one - serving canned salsa with the chips. Come on, making fresh salsa isn't that hard. Many restaurants take pride in their salsa, but not this one. It had that rubbery texture of vegetables that have been stewing in a jar for way too long.

My fiance chose the adobo-marinated half chicken. What came out was a half chicken, dry-roasted with a canned adobo sauce slathered on top. Very obviously not marinated. Bought-in tortillas were served with the meal as well as dried-out Mexican rice and refried beans that tasted burnt (and possibly bought-in as well).

My meal - "adobo marinated chicken enchiladas" - was equally terrible. What tasted like pre-cooked grilled chicken strips with no seasoning or flavoring was wrapped in greasy corn tortillas which was covered in a canned enchilada sauce. The sauce had that telltale metallic taste of generic, canned sauce. It was the covered in shredded cheddar cheese - which was melted (which turned into a bunch of chewy, stringy cheese with tons of oil bleeding out everywhere. Also on the side was the same burnt rice and beans.

Being hungry, I mostly finished my meal - my fiance got halfway through hers before quitting.

The one plus here is that when I asked to speak to the manager, he took immediate charge of our table, making sure our service improved, and only charged us for our margaritas, which were more than worth what we paid. We tipped him on the original amount of the bill.

I would be very hard-pressed to believe that Beso is anything more than a quick short-term project to make some cash off the downtown market. The food quality and service quality was abysmal. I would hope that, failing massive improvements to bring the restaurant into the quality of other Mexican establishments in town, if nothing else, the phenomenal manager that helped us that night finds a great career to use his skills in customer service at another more reputable establishment downtown. We'd gladly visit for that reason.

zink · PostMay 21, 2008#192008-05-21T06:24+00:00

Girlfriend and I went last weekend.

Services was not that bad for us. On par with everyone else. Actually when we sat at the bar, the bartender was very attentive to us.

The food.... eeekkk

The canned salsa and over salted chips were a no no. We didnt even finish our small plate of them. Details aside, the food was sadly bad. They really need to hire a Mexican chef or something. As of now, we can not go back there for the food. Hopefully later on they will improve.

O yea, they wouldn't even let us "mix & match" our tacos? Why do i have to get all 2 or 3 of the same meat?

the central scrutinizer · PostMay 21, 2008#202008-05-21T13:19+00:00

zink wrote:The canned salsa and over salted chips were a no no. We didnt even finish our small plate of them.

Given that most places lately seem to have no salt on the chips, this might be a good thing!

1000washington · PostMay 21, 2008#212008-05-21T16:00+00:00

zink wrote:Girlfriend and I went last weekend.

Services was not that bad for us. On par with everyone else. Actually when we sat at the bar, the bartender was very attentive to us.

The food.... eeekkk

The canned salsa and over salted chips were a no no. We didnt even finish our small plate of them. Details aside, the food was sadly bad. They really need to hire a Mexican chef or something. As of now, we can not go back there for the food. Hopefully later on they will improve.

O yea, they wouldn't even let us "mix & match" our tacos? Why do i have to get all 2 or 3 of the same meat?

I had the same issue with my enchiladas. I didn't feel like wasting the valuable time we finally had when our server appeared haggling so I took the thing that sounded the best. Unfortunately it was nowhere near good.

contractorkitchens · PostMay 21, 2008#222008-05-21T18:06+00:00

how do you screw up mexican???

i was going to give it a shot at least once, but from what i've been reading and hearing from my friends, i think i'll pass.

the central scrutinizer · PostMay 21, 2008#232008-05-21T19:20+00:00

ContractorKitchens wrote:how do you screw up mexican???

That's what I'm wondering. Even the worst Mexican restaurants, like Casa Gallardo & Chevy's, aren't bad, they just aren't good. The food tends to be too bland. This place sounds like bland would be an improvement.

innov8ion · PostMay 21, 2008#242008-05-21T23:55+00:00

The owner of Beso Mexican Grill and Cantina, Derek Onstott, really screwed the pooch. A recorded voice mail from Derek Onstott contains threats to mess up a woman's life and job for her submitting an honest yet negative Yelp review. Now he's beginning to understand the power of the internet and receiving negative attention throughout the friggin world. This place just opened up and it's already beginning to gain such notoriety?

The article about this incident hit the front page of digg.com today yielding thousands upon thousands of page views worldwide. The digg page here with comments: http://digg.com/food_drink/Restaurant_O ... Bad_Review

The cached article exposing the issue: http://snipurl.com/2a0e5

Beso's Yelp page: http://www.yelp.com/biz/beso-st-louis?r ... total_desc

Yelp Reviewer wrote:Derek and I share mutual friends, so he was able to obtain my phone number through one of them. I did not record any of the calls, but I saved on of the voice mails he left me. Apparently, he didn’t discover the Yelp review himself. A friend mentioned it to him and linked him to my review. Here is the transcribed version of the voice mail he left me:"

Voicemail transcription of Derek Onstott wrote: “Hi Rebecca this is Derek. I am calling in one last attempt to have you remove your review, and I spoke to my attorney about the first review you posted. I printed it out. That is defamation of character my attorney and will slap a lawsuit on you if the review is not gone in 24hrs. You never dined here. You don’t have receipt from here. You drank here, no service, no food… I will sue you. Your review has nothing to do with my restaurant… Trust me I will spend $10k in lawyers to win a $100k from you. I will drag your name through the mud, I ***** mean it. I will drag your ***** name through the mud. This is my livelihood. You drag my name through the mud I will drag yours. And mess up your life and job."

Yelp Reviewer wrote:
I did dine at his restaurant. He invited me to his restaurant as a guest. He gave me food and drinks. So he is correct - I don’t have a receipt.

Yelp Review from Gavin wrote:this review is to demonstrate the scale of how terribly the owner of this shop screwed up.

I live in Vancouver, Canada and there are people talking about "the st louis beso, a**hole, out on the street".

I have never been to St. Louis. and if I ever go, I'm going to probably talk trash about this shop to potential customers if I ever find myself standing in front of it.

when your business model starts to incorporate suing your customers, then you FAIL as a businessman. Your legal case has NO legs to stand on and I hope your shop goes belly-up from the astronomical negative press you're getting.

lukethedrifter · PostMay 22, 2008#252008-05-22T00:00+00:00

Anybody remember this review of Romo's Mexican International Cuisine from Jill Posey-Smith.

RFT wrote:At Romo's, however, there was no bread to break, only teeth. The bartender, after overcoming her initial surprise that my friend and I actually wanted dinner, duly confronted us with a basket of petrified tortilla chips that resembled some old Tostitos I'd recently flushed out from behind my fridge. This put me at a loss. Previously it had been my policy to base my first impression of Mexican holes-in-the-wall on the quality of their salsa. Because a salsa test requires tortilla chips, and because eating these chips was not a possibility if I valued my dental work, the true nature of Romo's sauce remains enshrouded in mystery.

--

At least I was filled with something, as it was extremely difficult to imagine filling up on the singularly ugly enchilada that appeared while the TV blared an ad for wrinkle cream. An exploratory incision into this oven-weary tortilla tube released a murky gush of burnt, granulated hamburger. One reluctant bite was enough to convince me never to darken the stoop of this establishment again. A plate of potato skins arrived after our server convinced us to substitute them for the chicken wings they were out of. They were cursed with the same inedible meat substance and appeared to have absorbed their weight in grease. Even my iron-willed companion shunned them after a single taste. There was no respite; the rice was crunchy, the beans were crusty, and everything was awash in a thin scarlet film.

citywatcher · PostMay 22, 2008#262008-05-22T01:06+00:00

MORE DRAMA !!!!

WILD !!

zink · PostMay 22, 2008#272008-05-22T14:16+00:00

Nice find Innov8ion.

thewayofthearch · PostMay 22, 2008#282008-05-22T17:01+00:00

How did he ever come to the conclusion that was the appropriate way to address his "problem"?

Its like kicking dirt on an umpire: You're still out of the game and you just look like a bigger ass doing it.

jeff707 · PostMay 22, 2008#292008-05-22T17:20+00:00

Maybe he was trying to motivate his employees to do a better job at threatening the customers?

foodicles · PostMay 22, 2008#302008-05-22T17:41+00:00

I saw the writing on the wall when he was in construction. I was in the building and he was on the elevator with me telling me how he was also going to rent the 6th floor so he take the women he meets in his place up stairs. The lesson learned: If you go into the rest/bar business looking bag chicks you will only end up getting screwed.

debaliviere · PostMay 22, 2008#312008-05-22T17:56+00:00

foodicles wrote:If you go into the rest/bar business looking bag chicks you will only end up getting screwed.

How very Confucian of you.

njenney · PostMay 22, 2008#322008-05-22T19:05+00:00

ContractorKitchens wrote:how do you screw up mexican???

Have you ever been to SuSala (http://www.susalastl.com/) on S. Kingshighway?

brickandmortar · PostMay 23, 2008#332008-05-23T14:00+00:00

^once...that was enough for me.

lukethedrifter · PostMay 25, 2008#342008-05-25T00:15+00:00

That's too bad about Su Sala. The proprietors seem to be really nice peeps (which has next to nothing to do with how good your food is, I know.)

the central scrutinizer · PostJul 04, 2008#352008-07-04T03:44+00:00

Friend from out of town, here working on a contract gig. Renting downtown. We're walking back from the Cards game tonight. I'm pointing out various historically/architecturally significant buildings. Also pointing out various restaurants and bars. We get to Beso. He says, "I was in that place a few weeks ago. It was awful".

jcity · PostJul 04, 2008#362008-07-04T16:10+00:00

is this place good or not? never been

1000washington · PostJul 04, 2008#372008-07-04T19:17+00:00

JCity wrote:is this place good or not? never been

Some of the worst food downtown.

bprop · PostJul 04, 2008#382008-07-04T20:39+00:00

1000washington wrote:
JCity wrote:is this place good or not? never been

Some of the worst food downtown.

I've been there a few times for lunch. It's not bad relative to the price. We had a group that went to ZuZu almost every week, and they tried Beso. Half think Beso is a little better and half think ZuZu is better, neither by a lot.

1000washington · PostJul 05, 2008#392008-07-05T16:20+00:00

bprop wrote:
1000washington wrote:
JCity wrote:is this place good or not? never been

Some of the worst food downtown.

I've been there a few times for lunch. It's not bad relative to the price. We had a group that went to ZuZu almost every week, and they tried Beso. Half think Beso is a little better and half think ZuZu is better, neither by a lot.

Then maybe I'm being a little unfair, I've only tried it once and it was a pretty bad experience, enough so I haven't given it a second shot.

avlis · PostJul 06, 2008#402008-07-06T20:41+00:00

Its OK on a Sunday afternoon as they are one of the few places open. The food is average at best, at least what I tried. I would never find myself craving anything they serve, but it is edible. I would rather walk across the street for average food than jump in my car for good food sometimes.

Beso

Choose Display Mode