What can I say about this restaurant in Findlay, OH. It was definitely an interesting experience like I stated in the title. I really wanted to like Vivir, but there were just too many things working against it.
Let me explain....
As I mentioned in this post, 
That's how we ended up at Vivir. Unlike your traditional American Mexican restaurant, Vivir is more of a taqueria and their menu is a bit smaller than what you might expect given that fact.
When we stepped into Vivir, it seemed that they weren't very busy. We weren't sure if that was a good or bad sign, but we took a seat at the table with the others. As soon as we sat down the hostess showed up and gave us some water. No big deal. She said our waitress would be around soon to take care of us.
So we waited.... and waited.... and waited...
Eventually our hostess came back and let us know again that our waitress would be around shortly. We honestly should have left right then, but we were tired from traveling and hungry, so we figured we would wait it out.
Finally, after maybe twenty minutes our waitress showed up.
We put in our food order and there was a special where you could get a bucket of five beers for a ridiculous price, so we ordered that too.
Then we waited... and waited... and waited...
I'd say a good half our later, they finally brought our beers out to us. They also brought some chips and queso as well as plates that clearly still had dried up queso on them. To their credit, the Modelo was cold and delicious. My brother in law stated he didn't care how long it took our food to come. He had his bucket of beer and he was set!
We asked for new plates (from our hostess), because our waitress was still nowhere to be found. My wife suggested we just throw a $20 bill on the table and walk, but we had already put in our food order, so we felt kind of obliged to stay.
Finally, probably an hour or more after we placed our order, our food came.
My family are such good sports about me taking photos for blog posts. I think it is more to humor me than anything, but if I have never said it before and they actually read this, I appreciate it.
If you have ever been to an American Mexican restaurant, you know that the food usually comes out pretty fast because most of the dishes are composed of items that require a lot of prep work ahead of time. For the most part, it's just throwing those prepared items together into a burrito, enchilada, taco, or quesadilla and warming it up.
Clearly that wasn't the case here given we waited so long for our food. Part of us wondered if our waitress forgot to put our ticket in.
My sister in law got the burrito you see above.
Unfortunately, despite the food looking beautiful, the flavors weren't quite up to par. Still miles above the service though.
I got the three taco plate that came with two sides. I picked the black beans you see above that sadly had very little flavor. I don't think I even ate half of them. They were far too watery and bland.
I also got the elote' that you see above. It was a bit better than the beans and my brother in law enjoyed his, but I am pretty spoiled when it comes to corn. The stuff that we get up in Michigan towards the end of summer is like eating candy. It's so sweet and juicy. People who know corn can quickly tell the difference between a good ear of sweet corn and stuff that tastes more like field corn.
This unfortunately was the latter for me.
My first taco selection was the whitefish taco or pescado. I should have known better. Northern Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin are pretty much the home of whitefish, so we have some exceptional whitefish at home. This tasted just a little too fishy so I knew it wasn't quite fresh. I ate the taco, but it wasn't my favorite.
The chipotle cream sauce on it was good and the pineapple salsa wasn't as bad as I thought it would be given the fact I don't really care for pineapple. I don't think I would get this taco again though.
My second taco selection was the carne and I would have to say this was probably my favorite. Really simple, just steak, onions, cheese and cilantro on a tortilla. Kind of hard to screw it up really, but trust me, it was quite good.
I forgot to mention, one of the times the waitress actually showed up, she mentioned that they had zero pork available. That meant the already small menu was basically cut in half with no pork dishes being available to us.
With that in mind, my final taco was the chicken tinga. It was okay, but definitely not my favorite of the three. I'd actually probably put it in last place even below the pescado which you might find surprising.
As we were finally eating our dinner, a young family with a small baby came into the restaurant. The sat down and waited.... and waited... and waited...
My sister in law eventually leaned over to them and suggested that they just leave. They said they were just discussing if they should leave. Given the fact that they had a small baby, we didn't feel it was right to let them go through the torture we just had.
They promptly got up and walked out.
Oddly enough, the next night when we were a couple doors down at the brewery, I walked down to get some shots of the exterior of Vivir. It looked like they were closed. Which was odd since it was a Saturday night and there was a street festival taking place.
Perhaps they knew they didn't have the staff to cover that kind of traffic so they just decided to shut down. I don't know.
I don't feel like it happens too often, but this is one of those times where I just can't recommend you check this place out. With so many other great places in the area, just walk on by this one and visit somewhere else.
Trust me.
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or