Cafe Tomas

Late night dinner — atmosphere OK, café like (matches the name) — best fish meal in PR — waiter directed us toward fresh — preparation was excellent — good service — I would return

Recently I visited their café, Tompy, that was excellent. I decided to try the restaurant for dinner. BIG MISTAKE! Terrible service, very pricey, didn’t have half the items on the menu available, never brought us water, and I bit into 2 chicken bouillon cubes in my mofongo (very salty). When I told them about it and that my tongue was numb due to the sodium, there was no reaction, no apology, nor was it deducted from the bill. I will never return and I suggest you don’t waste your time and money.

Cafeteria-​style food with gourmet price tag. Super slow with an hour wait time, so forget having lunch there, and the food is cold when it gets to your table. Their dinner front-​of-​house service is way better than their daytime front-​of-​house service! No consistency. One time I went there for lunch with a group of friends and the server «Madeline» was just plain rude to me. She made fun of me in front of my friends and then when I refused to tip her she tipped herself anyway from my change. My worst dining experience in ponce yet. You are better off going to the cafeteria next door because it’s the same kitchen, same food or elsewhere in the vicinity.

good stuff. puerto rican coffee is the tops.

The main reason i am giving 2 stars is the service. It was really slow, but we came in at the end of lunch service and there was only one server for the five tables sitting. The other reason is that my husband and i got the mofongo (the second time during our trip) and it was by far better at the other restaurant. This one was dry and very heavy amd tough. The sauce was not nearly as flavorful either. Since this trip is our first intro to mofongo, not sure which was more authentic, but i know what tastes good to me.

Again, a disappointment while vacationing in Puerto Rico. The menu becomes one in the same. Truthfully, we did not have much time to explore Ponce (we drove through the mountains for 3 hours to get here!). Our time in Ponce was cut even more short, due to the slowly paced meal at Café Tomas.
I just asked the woman working at the firehouse in the Parque de Bombas, where to go for local PR food. She said to come here, or its café counterpart (more of a takeout). It’s located a few blocks away from the main square, on a quite side street. The takeout version would have probably been a better option considering the slow service in PR, and Café Thomas is no exception. I was actually surprised to see this as #2 listed best restaurants in Ponce (by some unknown internet source). Ugh.
Anyway, my parents and came here for lunch, around1:30. We were seated right away; anywhere we like (customary again for PR). To her defense, the waitress was the ONLY one taking care of the orders, serving, and ringing people up. She did an ok job refilling our waters, and bringing the check at meal’s end; the main issue was that we waited forever for our food– but perhaps that’s more the kitchen’s fault, not our waitress’. The menu is pretty limited here. I had the chicken breast, grilled, served with garlic sauce (ajillo). It was still pretty dry, flavorless and tough to cut. The garlic sauce was pretty nonexistent. I was thinking it would have been more like a rotisserie, but alas, tasted more like frozen chicken (with some pink parts). I did happen to finish it all, because I was really hungry. I had a side salad, and maduros as a side– which were way too greasy :(.
My mom had the pork cubes, which were fried– also with the maduros. Her dish just looked so nasty, and brown. She told me that the pork cubes weren’t bad– dried out and salted, which is to her liking but to me, they seemed hard and a far cry from the tasty, tender pernil you see all over in PR. They seemed to be so juicy-​less. My dad had the red snapper (which he tried at many other places), with again rice and beans (fine) and he didn’t rate the fish too high– it was tough and dry.
Prices were somewhere near the $ 15 range. I’d hate to think that this is all that Ponce has to offer. In this case, our waitress wasn’t solo at fault for the slow meal, but the quality of the food did not make the wait worth it.

Honestly. this was probably the worst meal I ate in Puerto Rico. It wasn’t horrible but the food was just meh and the price was high for the food. The service wasn’t very good either. The waitress was very slow and it took awhile to get food that was fried in a restaurant that had 2 other small parties in it. I ordered the shrimp mofongo and it was the worst I had in Puerto Rico (very heavy, not much seasoning and the shrimp didn’t taste fresh, despite us being a mile from the beach). i would say skip this place. Oh but do get some ice cream from Kings Ice cream on the plaza. That stuff was TASTY!

Located on a semi-​busy street just off the main square in Ponce, Café Tomas is a good place to get away from the streets and have some good food in a quiet professional environment. This place doesn’t look like much from the outside but has great service inside, tasteful food, intelligent waiters and conversational cooks. The inside has more formal décor reminiscent of a Spanish Tapas Bar. We had their steak and salmon with a fritters sample platter that was very typical of the street fried food you find around the county.