KAYA - Abominable

 Last Friday my husbund and I had the misfortune of trying the new
 Carribean restaurant in the strip district called KAYA which was opened
 by the same person who owns and operates Mad Mex.  About the only thing
 it had going for it was an interesting decor and a connoisseurs
 selection of beer, scotch, and bourbon.  The food and inadequate service
 appeared to me to be an afterthought to the atmospheric bar.

 They are billing themselves as a tapas bar/restaurant which is a
 Spanish term anyway not Caribbean and are pulling off a very poor
 example of what a "tapas" selection should be.  The point of tapas,
 which are small portions of varying tastes, is to make a meal out of a
 lot of different selections or just try one thing if that is your
 proclivity, the choice of how much food you are served is entirely your
 own.  All of the "tapas" selections were around $5.00 and included
 soups, fritters, mussels, etc.  The selections I chose were the mussels
 which smelled fishy when they arrived, first bad sign, were served with
 toast that was stuck in the brothy bowl producing a soggy presentation,
 second bad sign, and was served with such a strong tasting broth that it
 was hard to determine if the mussels were bad or if it was just the
 broth, which tasted very bad.  I also ordered the conch fritters which
 were doughy, tastelss, and contained very little conch which was a hard,
 rubbery apparition in the one fritter I dared to choke down.

 I was fortunate to only order two such atrocities and the evening could
 have been made more endurable if I had been able to order palatable
 drinks but that was not to be the case either.  I first thought a glass
 of Sangria would be nice since it was such a hot day but this drink
 turned out to be sickly sweet and upon probing the waiter for its
 ingrediants found that it contained brown sugar to the degree that it
 left a horrible sweet aftertaste.  Our waiter, who was not attentive to
 begin with, made spurious efforts to evade any possible conflicting
 input as to the state of anything that was served to us so it took quite
 a while to track him down and make him understand, blatently, that I was
 unhappy with the Sangria and would instead order a white wine spritzer
 which I had to describe to him in detail.  I gave explicit directions to
 make it with club soda, chardonney, and a twist of lemon.  After
 receiving this request, he left the Sangria on the table, dashed off to
 another table of diners, and then returned to the kitchen, which we were
 sitting near enough to see into.  After ten minutes of no drink I
 flagged him down and ask if I could please have it and got a terse reply
 that it was coming.  He then went directly to the bar and ordered it for
 the first time, I'm sure, then turned an about face and went back to the
 kitchen.  I saw the drink come up immediately but my waiter was no where
 to be found and my husbund reported to me that our he could see our
 waiter in the kitchen eating and that he probably would not be out for a
 while.  He finally came out, grabbed the drink and plopped it on our
 table.  It, too, was undrinkable.  It tasted like it had Roses lime
 juice dumped in it and was so tart that it was impossible to discern
 what the wine tasted like.  When I questioned the waiter about what was
 put in the drink, he bold faced lied to me and said it was only club
 soda and wine with a lemon twist, that he watched the bartender make it!
  As you recall a few sentences back, I watched him order the drink and
 turn directly around and head back to the kitchen for at least ten
 minutes.  The restaurant is small enough and narrow enough that it is
 not hard to keep track of what is going on at all times.

 They also served main courses and my husbund ordered a chicken dish
 where the chicken was rolled up around some kind of spicy mixture and
 served with rice.  When it arrived everything on the plate looked a day
 old and it had apparently been sitting for quite a while.  My husbund
 also thought it tasted old and did not represent a good marriage of
 flavours.

 I could go on and on about the socializing with each other and milling
 about of the huge wait staff and their inability to wait on any of the
 tables effectively or the kitchen help standing outside where outdoor
 tables were set up taking smoking breaks in full view of the diners or
 how cramped the sitting arrangements were but I think I will stop here.

 Feel free to form your own opinion of this place but I felt it my duty
 to forewarn the unwary of at least one bad dining experience it was able
 to produce.