Acapulco Restaurant Parrilla

If you are tired of getting a poor exchange rate and being assessed with an extra 3% "overseas trasaction fee" on top of that by your credit card, it's about time that you start paying cash when you go overseas!Acapulco is one of many restaurants in Buenos Aires which will not only accept your precious dollars, but will also give you a better exchange rate. Naturally, the most elementary common sense will tell you that nobody would take $100 US for a $12 lunch! Therefore, make sure to have lots of $10 and $20 bills.While the official exchange rate is currently 5.46 pesos per dollar (but you will seldom get more than 5.30), many restaurants are offering somewhere between 6 and 9 pesos per $1 US. Between these two extremes, the most common rate is 7 or 7.50 in a normal restaurant, and I know several cafeterias near my usual Ibis Congreso hotel where you can have an excellent espresso for 12 AR$, give a $20 bill and get back 150 pesos minus 12 for the coffee.Acapulco takes dollars at the rate of 7 pesos, which is slightly lower than my expresso places, but still far above of the 5.30 that you will get at the bank. I wrote a WARNING about this method in my review of CHIQUILIN, which I invite you to read.I had a TWO COURSE LUNCH SET MENU WITH WINE for 83 pesos on Monday, July 23, 2013 and I had no bad surprise at the end: 83 they said, 83 it was.They have cheaper menus, but when I go to the South Cone, I usually take a cure of sirloin steaks cooked on charcoal or woodfire, which I have never seen in Miami Beach because, as I have been told a couple of times, it is forbidden to cook with wood fire over there. Whether this is true or not, it's a fact that I don't know of any restaurant cooking on wood fire in the Miami area.The "Bife de Chorizo" as they call it here (in Montevideo they call it "Entrecot") was big, good and perfectly cooked as requested. If you like your meat rose without blood, request a "jugosa" cooking.The second course in this menu was a dessert. I had a custard which was OK, but I would not sing a Gloria about it, as I did for the one that I had last month (June 5, 2013) at "La Cueva de Antolín" in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, for which I already posted a review.A cup of drinkakble wine was included in the menu and that was also the case for the "servicio de mesa" that almost everybody is still charging around here when you eat "à la carte"This was an extra fee that French restaurants charged half a century ago, when I was a student at the Sorbonne in the 1960s, but which had disappeared since the 1970s, about forty years ago. Well, they still add that fee in many restaurants in Buenos Aires and also in Montevideo. If you read my review of the "Congreso Plaza", you will learn that my two course dinner was 37 pesos and there was a 10 pesos "table service" added. This is a fixed fee no matter the amount of the bill, but in that case it represented almost 30% of the price of the meal!At the end, there was NO BAD SURPRISE in Acapulco. I gave a $20 bill and I got 57 pesos back.Certainly, if you don't care for meat cooked on charcoal, you will find lots of restaurants in the center offering the same 2 course set menu for lunch with drinks for around 50 or 60 pesos, and I even found a THREE COURSE LUNCH WITH SODA for only 60 pesos if you pay cash at a place called CENTRO HISTORICO, for which a review is already in the make.But if you want to have a big sirloin steak cooked to perfection, Acapulco offers a fair deal at 83 pesos with dessert and a cup of drinkable wine, and also with a very good exchange rate of 7 pesos per $1, a/o July 22, 2013.

The food was terrible. Disgusting asado with horrible meat. Left us feeling sick. Service was awful-we're still waiting for the salt we asked for! Do not eat here. This is the reason why you should avoid restaurants in overly-touristy areas.

As a general rule I tend to avoid restaurants that don't have many patrons visible and hand out flyers to passers by. Unfortunately I could not convince my girlfriend that my general rule helps me avoid restaurants like this one. The next warning that we overlooked was the extensive menu which resulted in us being served frozen (rather than fresh) food. In addition, the prices were no bargain, even at the black market exchange rate of 6.1 pesos per $. The slow service was probably due to the time needed to defrost our entrees.

Found a worm in my food. DISGUSTING. And they still wanted us to pay! No apology, just a bill. Ridiculous. DO NOT EAT HERE - the place is disgusting!

This is by far, the worst restaurant you could ever imagine...the food was atrocious...and the red sauce for the mexican food tasted like an ashtray...the other reviews must have been made by the restaurant because there is no way that anyone could actually enjoy the poison they call food.