Surf Taco: A Dissapointing Taco Experience

While staying in Manasquan. NJ on a weekend getaway, we needed a quick snack because our friends who just arrived from the city were starving for lunch. My friend, who is from New Jersey knew of Surf Taco (121 Parker Ave., Manasquan, NJ) and recommended that be the place for our mid-afternoon snack before our dinner later.

We were absolutely starving when we arrived and the place didn't look super busy. When we placed our order, the cashier mentioned that they were catering for an event and that our order would take about a half hour and asked if we were ok with that. We were ok with a half hour wait, and placed our order. 

My boyfriend and I both ordered 2 types of tacos and decided to forgo the combo platter which included beans, a drink, and chips. However, our friends ordered the combo platter. One would think that if you are ordering a platter that comes with chips, and you are told that you have to wait a half hour for your food, that the cashier would supply you with your chips upon ordering so that you could snack on them and use the salsa bar while waiting. No such luck here!

Luckily, we were given our cups to fill up with soda while we waited. Surf Taco has one of those awesome movie theater style soda machines where you can pick between many flavors of soda and brands with a touch of a button. Unfortunately, they were out of all the fun flavors and we were stuck with orange or vanilla. They definitely needed to check on the machine and fill it up with the missing flavors! It seemed very neglected.

We sat down on the outdoor patio, and started to wait for our food. The clock kept ticking and ticking and ticking, until about an hour went by and no sign of our food. As I was about to stand up and check on what the hell was going on with our food, it finally arrived! For the time our tacos took to come out, they better be damn good. 

Garlic Shrimp Taco & Mahi Taco

When my boyfriend and my order arrived, we noticed that it came with chips, even without ordering the combination! We all found this misleading, since the only reason my friend ordered the combo was for the chips! They also should have given us these chips while we were waiting for that whole hour! 

I ordered one garlic shrimp taco and one mahi taco. The garlic shrimp taco was supposed to be sauteed with garlic and topped with shredded cabbage, pico de gallo, cilantro sauce, and lime juice. I didn't taste even a hint of garlic on the shrimp, pretty disappointing! 

The Mahi Taco was blackened Mahi Mahi, topped with avocado lime sauce, shredded cabbage, pico de gallo, slice of fresh avocado, chopped pineapple, and lime juice in a double corn tortilla. I can't say I tasted all those flavors in this taco either. It was not that exciting and I think I could have had better at Taco Bell. 

Traditionally Tacos are naturally flavorful with mixtures of ingredients, sauces, and textures, but these tacos definitely lacked that excitement. I understand that the restaurant was catering an event, but they should have either had more staff on that day to make sure the customers in the store were served in a timely matter or they should have closed the store that day. I think they definitely need to work on time management of preparing food for an event and having store business at the same time. All in all, we all felt like our tacos were prepared half-assed because of the event, and for the time they took, it was so nice not worth it.