My boyfriend and I tried Trebol for the first and last time last night. The restaurant does have a nice ambience. We waited at the hostess desk for someone to put us down on the list, however, there was no hostess. Several servers walked by, but we were not greeted by one of them and our presence was not acknowledged. We stood there for at least 8 minutes. Finally, a man from the party waiting behind us got fed up and went to the bar to ask if someone could help us. He was informed that 'the hostess will take care of you'. Hmmmm. A bartender did come over eventually and he wondered aloud where the hostess was. Lo and behold, she appeared after around 10 minutes and told us we would be waiting 20 minutes. I asked her what about the three available tables we could see. After another few minutes she said that it would actually be only a 5 minute wait. We were seated. I would not discount a restaurant just for this initial horrible first impression and was looking forward to the food.
They serve water from glass wine bottles - the water tasted extremely stale. I ordered a margarita, which was ok, but not extraordinary and took 10 minutes to get to the table. Our server brought us a complimentary plate of 2 tortillas which couldn't have been more than 4 inches across. So, yay! we each got one mini tortilla to dip in salsa. It made us laugh, it was so ridiculous. They were out of the turnovers, which is what we wanted to order for an appetizer. Instead, we ordered the halibut ceviche. It arrived with 4 tortilla chips. Wow, 2 for each of us. Of course, when we had eaten them, we still had a huge plate of ceviche left to eat. We asked for more chips to eat it with. The ceviche itself was bland, not enough lime, not enough salt, not enough cilantro. We also felt that, though the meat in our tacos was well done, and the presentation was nice, they relied too heavily on spiciness over real flavor. The crowning moment of the night was when we got the tab and found out that they charged us $2 for the extra plate of chips that made it possible for us to finish our ceviche. We felt extremely nickel and dimed for food that was just ok. If you want amazing tacos for a great price in NoPo, go to Por Que No!
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