Coyotes On Alki

I’m not sure where the below people were eating, but I had a great experience there. I had the fajitas– they were perfect and my date had something that came with cheesy cornbread. I kept taking bites of his– it was great. The service was nice and fast and the view is beautiful. I am a fan!
I will be back!

Ok. I tried. About six times. You can only blame it on bad management for the first month… sorry. BUT
1. Mexican restaurants DO NOT EVER run out of chips. Please. please… and on two visits… just please no
2. One of my bffs came with me one night and the server had to apologize because the bartender did not know how to make a margarita without the mix… then when she told them how it was made… no words honey, no words.
3. After a three hour wait for our food one night, the manager had the audacity to offer to «take care of our drinks». Yes, you know that was not acceptable.
There actually is more, but since it is MY BAD for going there more than once, I end here. With a well not deserved one star… I so tried to give you two Coyotes… you would NOT let me,

I’m surprised people dislike Coyotes so much; I enjoy it. I’ve not had a full sampling of their real menu, but come on: Happy Hour seven days a week (3−6pm)! What’s not to like?
Maybe it’s because I’ve only been there at like 3pm, but I’ve never had trouble with the service. My water’s stayed full even when I’ve been sitting outside; everyone’s been friendly. Sometimes they have trouble with weird bill splits but c’mon, math is hard.
Among the many well-​priced snacky options are oysters, a couple of salads, and tacos: $ 1 each, or $ 5 for all you can eat. So it’s not gourmet, but it’s not bad either; and come on, it’s Happy Hour. The normal menu has more frou-​frou choices, which I’ve yet to try. But the drinks I’ve had have been pretty good (mostly mojitos in various varieties). It’s a nice place to while away a summer afternoon.

If I could give this place ZERO stars, I would. When it first opened just in time for Cinco de Mayo 2006, my partner and I checked it out. Once we were seated at probably the smallest table on Alki, and crammed in amongst too many tables, a bus boy brought us water, but only after my partner requested it. When the boy brought the water, he was holding the top of the glasses with his palms… do I want to even THINK about where a boy/man’s palms have been in the course of a day? Holy smokes! We were willing to forego this gross restaurant health code misdemeanor just to get to the food-​stuff, but after sitting there for 20 minutes, and no one came to even greet our table, we just left.
Fast forward 15 months… the place has gotten its sea-​legs, right? WRONG. We went with a large party (11). They brought us 1 TEENY-​tiny-​miniscule basket of chips. And the salsa tasted like Coyotes added some chunks of broken tomato to a bowl of ketchup. When we asked for more chips we were told they were out. OUT?! WHAT KIND OF MEXI-​RAUNT GOES OUT OF CHIPS? The world should be coming to an end before ANY mexi-​raunt ANY where has that kind of anomaly.
Oh, it gets better my friends. During this debacle over the chips, there is a Mexican band walking from table to table playing songs, for the next 2 hours, in a space about 60×60ft with tile flooring. That’s small, and it echoes terribly loud. Unless the 6 piece band stopped for a second, we couldn’t hear each other unless we yelled; And forget about talking down a table that seats 11 people. Why would someone hire a six person BAND for such a small restaurant? Why not the three person Mariachi, if it has to be done? There is no logical answer, friend. That’s the problem.
Well, 1 hour later (an hour?!?), our food starts to arrive, plate by plate. Meaning the waitress didn’t bring it on a platter, and no bus person helped her. I ordered fajitas. How can you go wrong with fajitas? Oh, apparently Coyotes has figured out ways to make even the simplest Mexican dishes terrible. All my fajita trappings came out except the tortillas. Those came out after everyone else’s food. Logically, since according to the restaurant philosophy of Coyotes, one doesn’t really NEED hot food! The tortillas weren’t the correct kind (I’m actually allergic to flour tortillas, and asked for corn, but I got flour), but I just ate them anyway because I couldn’t stand waiting any longer for them.
The worst part of the fajitas is (try to hold something for this one, dear reader!) there was no cheese with them. I was shocked into both cold acceptance and hilarious giggles over the dire fate my dinner had taken.
One person in our party told the waitress that her salad was «vile,» and handed it back to the staff (meaning she did not eat it). The salad was still on our final bill, at full price to boot.
As we were all getting up to leave for the evening (with much relief), we saw a fresh basket of hot chips going to another table, 2 hours from when the place ran out.
All the waitress could say was sorry, and the kitchen was so busy, and so slammed. I must point out, eager readers, that there were about 8 of maybe 20 tables EMPTY the entire night: almost half the restaurant! There must have been 1 person in the kitchen, missing an arm and an eye for it to go down the way it did.
If I ever go to this place again, it will be when the space becomes some other restaurant.

2 stars because they were there and they had alcohol. Pretty much that’s it.
Service was horrible, we had 3 waiters and there was absolutely no organization whatsoever, and one of the waiters was quite creepy to the girls next to us.
The Coyote Margarita sucks.

A group of 12 of us went to Coyote’s for dinner tonight and had a decent time. The food was okay but the service was extremely slow. I mean SLOOOOOWWW! We chose a beautiful evening to go to Alki for dinner and the view didn’t disappoint, but we probably wouldn’t go to Coyote’s again.
editing my review to say I guess it is now closed!

Okay, the food was acceptable. When it finally got to us. That was an hour and 10 minutes into the experience. Ironically, we had chosen Coyotes because of its proximity to my parents’ place and my mother needed some food asap because of her diabetes and blood sugar and all that stuff I don’t have to deal with…
But crabby mothers, I do have to deal with so we went close by. Should have gone back to the good ol’ Bamboo Grill.
Even after receiving our dinners there was a lack of tortillas. Now I’m not Mexican by birth or even by watching the occasional match of Futbol Mondal but I know that you’re supposed to get the tortillas with the fajitas, wrap them up, insert in mouth… etc… After 12 minutes of waiting I finally got up to find someone actually working at the place. I found our waiter with our two containers of tortillas. Problem was that he was meaning to drop them both off on another table. I pointed out that we hadn’t received ours yet and he made like one belonged to us. «I put them all together in one for you. Would you like some more as well»? More??? More than the 3 tortillas you had combined for us? That’s more than the 1.5 tortillas apiece? Wow. What a bonus!
Let’s go back to the beginning of the meal. Chips were cold and no salsa. We asked for it. Tick tick tick…
«Would you like some wine, Mom?»
«Certainly, dear. Some white would be nice».
«A bottle of your house Chardonnay please».
15 minutes later the waiter comes back to tell us that the «wine truck» hadn’t arrived that day and could they substitute another wine at the same price. I suggested another chard from the menu and he said they had an excellent pinot blah blah that we would enjoy. We agreed.
10 minutes after that the waiter checked in to tell us that the bartender was just making sure the bottle was «Extra Chilled». Again, the bonuses never ended.
When the bottle finally arrived it was in a bucket of ice. After taking a sip it became obvious that it had been sitting out for God knows how long and they had dumped it in the bucket for 20 minutes in order to provide that elusive «extra chill».
This place can’t even keep their white wine cold. I’m a clod and I know it goes in the fridge.
Bottom line. This place was the worst kind of bad. All of the things considered I probably would never have bothered joining Unilocal and making a fuss but every situation was compounded by the fact that they lied about what was happening because I apparently have «sucker» marked on my forehead.
Even with using two free meal cards I still feel like we overpaid.
So many other nice restaurants right there. Avoid this one.
Oh. and the pinot blah blah was bland.

If you are ever on Alki I suggest you don’t go to Coyotes. Bad food, bad service the only good thing about it is the view of Alki.
I went when it first opened and the menu was limited and so were the braincells of our waitress. The food was over Americanized Mexican food and the Margarita’s tasted like pure lime juice.
Second time I went, about two months after the first, different waitress same braincells missing. Food again was just as bad as the first time and my stoli tonic was all stale tonic. Good thing I had a table outside in the sun or else the evening really would have been ruined.
I can say I will never on my own accord be going back to Coyotes.

Coyotes, huh? More like Coyote Ugly. I was severely disappointed with this place. After attempting to branch out into an area of Seattle that I rarely explore (Alki), I thought Coyotes on Alki looked like a cute venue with a good view. While the view of the beach and its accompanying crashing waves was wonderful, the food and service left much to be desired. The server didn’t smile, make recommendations or seem especially interested in interacting with us. I don’t think she really enjoyed her job, which might have been caused by her experience of the food, but that’s just my theory…
I first experienced the food quality (or lack thereof) through the cold, stale chips. Is it really that hard to keep fresh chips on hand at a Mexican restaurant??? Its not like they don’t serve them to every single table! The salsa was decent, so that helped redeem the chips. Then came the meal (Coyote Combo) which was just ok, not especially great. Of course, that might have been my own fault, since culinary excellence is not usually accompanied by the word «combo».