Magdalena´s Party restaurant

[Fabe]

I clearly remember a leson learnd in a Quality Control course I took in my younge days. The lecturer stated that A satisfied customer might tell 3 people about the experience . A dissatisfied customer would tell anyone that would be willing to listen.
I am positive that if i had ever not returned a customers call , or not answered an email , Id most likely be fired on the spot.
These concepts , tennants and notions are of no interest to the argentine buissiness person .
The attitude of making a sale is that their buissiness is a honeytrap , they will get the buissiness.That drive to go out and get the buissiness is a concept that has been lost in argentina for at least 25 years.
Customers here are institutionaly reviled , thought of as suckers.
An owner will not CARE about his employees being rude or incompetent.
The fist thing a buiss owner does as soon as he can is to LEAVE the place in the hands of his "serf" help , thereby attaining the status that has always alluded him

 

[Davidglen77]

Here's a tip: If they don't come to you within 5 minutes of you sitting down, walk out. It's what I do. I'm not saying what they did was cool, and I understand your desire for good customer service. Believe me, I do. However, you'll probably live a lot longer if you avoid getting all outrageous because of something that's really quite insignificant. There are many restaurants out there that do provide good customer service, Maria Felix Mexican Restaurant being my favorite -- and no, I don't know the owner or work there either.

Here's a tip: start over from the beginning and read my post all over again. I in no way said I was "outraged" over the wait. Having to wait to be served at a restaurant on a Saturday night in a busy area is pretty standard. The menu price switch is what "outraged" me and made the waste of my 40 minutes where I could have been enjoying my evening elsewhere unacceptable, because after a display like that I certainly was not going to give them my business. I have a good sense of what's fair and very well know how to pick and chose my battles. That is why I left, I wasn't going to argue and demand they do anything for me, I expressed myself and walked out, the best protest in the world and no sleep lost on my end. We then found a very cute rotisería a few blocks away and enjoyed the rest of our evening.

 

[KevinK]

Saturday Jan 7th night around 11PM we went to Magdalena's after hearing about it in expat circles. We sit down and after 30 MINUTES a kid comes over and puts menus on our table. About 10 minutes after that, a young lady comes over to our table no hello or welcome and she said "ok tell me" I ordered the tacos (which the menu said were $15 each or 3 for $30 and my friend ordered the hamburger with fries for $25. She says "ok" and picks up the menus, looks at them and says "oh no these are not the right prices, the prices changed last month", goes away and brings us new menus with higher prices - $15 each for the tacos (no offer of 3 for $30) and the hamburger with fries $30. I was outraged got up and asked for the manager, the manager, a young lady, just kind of shrugged her shoulders and apologized by saying "we are very busy and we are short employees tonight". Is that a valid excuse for changing prices on menus in our face? I understand completely if the service is slow, however it was Saturday night, there some customers in the restaurant but it certainly wasn't full, there were 2 girls, a guy plus a bartender.......and obviously people in the kitchen, you can't run a small restaurant of barely 25 tables with 4 employees plus a kitchen staff, they should reconsider their line of work.......of course we left and would never consider going back to a place that operates this way!
Thames 1795 (corner Costa Rica) in Palermo SOHO

Never been to that resturant but have lived here long enough to understand that in a highly inflationary place like we are living it is very possible for the resturant to have a stack of older menus...(to avoid this some just manually rewrite the price) with last months prices...How many times do your order food takeout here and the price on your menu that they sent you last month is different than the prices of the new one now...That someone made a mistake and gave you the old menu and then advised you before you ordered...is not really anything but part of living in a high inflation country...as far as poor service that is just wrong in any resturant but dont get in such an uproar over an updated menu it happens every month...

 

[sesamosinsal]

That is why I left, I wasn't going to argue and demand they do anything for me, I expressed myself and walked out, the best protest in the world and no sleep lost on my end. We then found a very cute rotisería a few blocks away and enjoyed the rest of our evening.

Except you come here and post a rant about something as common in this city as the dog poo on the sidewalks. Why don't you tell us more about the rotiseria, as the exceptions to the rule are more useful than telling us about the vast majority who comply with the rule. Exchanging a few words where you moan and groan about the customer service is useless when it's their pocketbook that matters in the end, and, you may say otherwise, but I suspect you didn't handle the situation as diplomatically as you could have.

Lastly, I hope you let them know about this thread because they seem to want to to correct their mistakes -- at least they offered a client who posted on GuiaOleo an apology and wanted to get in contact with him to rectify the situation. It seems they cheated him out of a Facebook discount. All of the other reviews seem quite positive.

 

[Napoleon]

I've been to Magdalena's Party. I like the place. I like the onda. I've been a couple of times for brunch. I have done my best to avoid going there for food for about 3+ months now.

I like a couple of the owners. They're smiley happy people. The service at tables is atrocious. If it doesn't take an 45 minutes to get your food, it take 35 and something's wrong. Or it takes 50 minutes... and something' wrong. And this is for brunch. It's like they've got it figured out in their heads, but there's not a clue.

The food that I've had there is good. And if I were there on a Tuesday night having a few drinks, I might order tacos while I'm there. But do NOT go there hungry! HUGE MISTAKE. You might eat your hand before you get food served to you. And that's if you're drinking at the bar.

I like a casual brunch, but I don't go to brunch to get wasted on Bloody Mary's. I go to eat brunch food. (Not everyone does.) If you're not planning on having 3 or 4 Bloody Mary's to fill you up while you're waiting an hour from entering the restaurant until you get your food (or more), you're going to die.

For Brunch: there's Malvón

For Tacos: there's Taco Factory (Fabricada de Tacos), tons of Mexican food restaurants now, or you could just get a shwarma. (Lot's of options for that as well.)

I do like Magdalena's Party and I still do like the owners that I've met and the bartending staff, but if you really want to eat food, you could make a gourmet meal before they would get around to serving you, AND your meal would come out correctly.

PS- There's no excuse for bad customer service. You can excuse "ok service" instead of "excellent service", but there's no excuse for "bad service".

 

[cruizes]

There's no excuse for bad customer service. You can excuse "ok service" instead of "excellent service", but there's no excuse of "bad service".

Well said!

 

[Davidglen77]

Never been to that resturant but have lived here long enough to understand that in a highly inflationary place like we are living it is very possible for the resturant to have a stack of older menus...(to avoid this some just manually rewrite the price) with last months prices...How many times do your order food takeout here and the price on your menu that they sent you last month is different than the prices of the new one now...That someone made a mistake and gave you the old menu and then advised you before you ordered...is not really anything but part of living in a high inflation country...as far as poor service that is just wrong in any resturant but dont get in such an uproar over an updated menu it happens every month...

Sorry but the inflationary issue is not a good excuse for what happened to us. I owned a retail business here in Buenos Aires for 3 years and I carried over 300 different items. If I or one of my employees mismarked a price or didn't update the price in the system, which did happen every so often, well I took the loss, I never expected a customer to pay a different price at the register than what they saw on the shelf. I never would dream of doing something like that, it's totally unethical and apart from that I know it would ruin my reputation as a business owner. It really doesn't take a lot to make customers happy, good quality, reasonable prices, offer specials, if you have repeat customers give them a small gift every now and then, smile and greet everyone who comes into your business, that's pretty much it. Unfortunately there are some businesses that don't have a clue. There are some that do and those are the ones where I choose to be a customer.

 

[TheBlackHand]

They have great tacos and their mixed drinks are some of the best i've had in Buenos Aires. Their burgers aren't as good as The Office though. Never had a bad meal there but on some occasions the service can be a little slow.

 

[Galatina]

It's sad because nothing will ever change here because we are all accepting "the rule"

Yes well it doesn't have to be the rule does it? I certainly will not go to this resyo after reading this post, and besides why on earth should we be spending our hard earned money on lousy food and service?

 

[Matt84]

Hi, Happy New Year everybody. Haven't been posting here much lately ,but anyway,

B.A. is after all a conservative city, don't torture yourselves with "this and that" "little new place" or big new place, just go to the tried and true, places that have been in business for at least 20 years and you wont be dissappointed with customer service, on the contrary,

There's no good middle ground either, restaurants are either passable good and expensive, or... better to eat at home

I don't know exactly what it means but I believe the term "enganapichanga" applies to the whole neighborhood off Palermo west of Santa Fe.

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The above message was for consumers only! Entrepreneurs, wish you the best of luck, but probably wont dine at any "cute new place", and new means the last 5 years