Cao Restaurant in Cancun, located in the Puerto Cancun plaza, is named correctly, if we were to use its letters as in: C for Crappy, A for Average, O for Outrageously expensive.
Sad thing is, this place was pretty decent the first time we went, about three years ago. It was always a high-end restaurant, with prices on the upper range, but the food was good and the service, impeccable. So it was worth the price. NOT ANYMORE! We went back to CAO about a week ago, looking for a nice place to have dinner with a friend who was turning the big 5-0. We arrived and the music was low-key, the ambiance just what we were looking for. We ordered our drinks, then ordered a bunch of appetizers to share among the five of us before ordering our main courses. And as we were in the middle of eating our appetizers, the DJ went ballistic and turned up the music so high that we couldn’t hear each other talk. I called the waiter and told him “Can you hear me”. He replied “What?!”. I said “Exactly!” He couldn’t hear me over the music! So we asked him to have the DJ tune it down. Nothing. We asked the manager. Nothing. We up and left and went to eat at the restaurant next door (Cenacolo).
But let’s talk about the food: It is blah. And I don’t say this because I’m upset about the music incident. It really is “BLAH”. The presentation is good, the portions are smallish. But the taste, that deciding factor, is just not there. The ribeye-wrapped-asparagus were stringy, the fig salad was bland. The only thing decent was the tacos (hey, it’s Mexico, you can’t get that wrong!) And the prices were high, not only for Cancun, but in general, if you were to get this same food anywhere in the world, let’s say, Miami, it’d be considered expensive. With 4 appetizers, one round of margaritas each, we ended up paying over $5,000 Mexican pesos.
If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I don’t tend to shred to pieces the places that I review. I consider myself quite just. But to be just, and save you an expensive trip to a bad restaurant, I will advice you not to go to CAO.
So, on to rating this place: The location is great, the food presentation is also great, the service is “meh”, the food is bland, the prices are way too high. So my rating for CAO Restaurant in Cancun, would be a mere 3 stars. But… because they were so annoying with the music, turning the place into a loud disco and pushing us out, my final rating is a low 2 stars, and that’s being generous!
