El Centro DF

I've been here a handful of times and I vouch for the food, drinks and the basement, which I think they call the tequileria.  I'm not a fan of the young party crowd on the rooftop with questionable music taste. But the basement is sexy and the bartenders know their tequila.  If you like tequila or want the full experience, El Centro is a tequila specialty restaurant.  I recommend a sampler and the Red and Smoky.  The food is really great as well. I haven't tried a bad meal yet. I will warn you that dinner is not a late night affair because the place turns into a club at some point.

Food and prices here were reasonably good, which earns Centro 3 stars.  But if you want to be able to have a conversation over dinner, don't even think of going to this noise factory.  Appetizer ceviche was fresh and nicely seasoned.  Skirt steak was tasty and grilled to order (very rare) correctly with delicious accompanying corn masa - obviously made fresh.  The signature margarita didn't really taste like it was made with fresh squeezed lemon juice, but reasonably priced malbec by the bottle compensated.  However nothing compensates for the maddening din.

Incredible food,  insanely sketchy behavior.

So I have never written a yelp review before much less a bad one, but this was upsetting enough to me that I wanted to put it out there. I had gone here a few times and really loved the food.  I'm really particular about mexican and this place does it so well.

So, I decided to bring about 6 friends to dinner there on my birthday at the end of may. We split the check between us and all the receipts looked fine. However I just saw one of my friends again recently and she told me that when she saw her bank statement she had been charged for the entire cost of the dinner in addition to still charging everyone else for their parts. This was a difference of about 130 dollars. And because her receipt says that she only was charged the correct, smaller amount, it suggests
that someone went in and changed the total.

What makes this even worse is that she spent about 2 weeks calling them almost daily to get this resolved and they kept putting her off. She finally called her bank and got rhe charges reversed . But she still hasn't heard from the restaurant.

Its a shame because I had been actively recommending this place. Now I'm warning people away. (During one of her phone calls to the restaurant, a staff member mentionwd that they deal with stuff like this a lot. Which is extra disturbing to me.)