• 3
• Maybe it was an off day

It's wonderful that we're finally getting vegan food in Guatemala City. I'd wanted to try Shasta as soon as it opened, but it's in a part of the city I don't go to often. When errands took us nearby, we jumped at the chance. The general location is worth a visit. It's hip, with the influences of artists, a university, and tech businesses. It feels completely different from anywhere else in Guatemala City. The restaurant is tiny. We were there at 4pm on a Thursday afternoon, and there were only two other people having drinks. The menu looks wonderful and pretty extensive. We chose the spring rolls, Pho, and Don Sesamo noodles. Our lemonades came quickly, but without the lemon--the server gave us glass of sugar water. He realized his mistake pretty quickly and brought new glasses, but they didn't have much lemon either. The spring rolls came out to our chorus of "ooooh." The presentation is beautiful: fat spring rolls full of greens. Unfortunately, the presentation is the best part. The sauce on the plate was oily and tasteless. The sauce in the rolls was better, but thin and there was very little of it. We went from "ooooh" to "huh." The pho was full of mushrooms and greens with rice noodles. The broth was watery: it had a nice flavor, but with no richness. At first it was hard to tell because it was quite spicy (I like spicy, but this was on the edge of too much). I expect a large bowl when I order pho, but this was just a regular soup bowl. The Don Sesamo noodles had a thin peanut sauce. Again, surprisingly little flavor. Picante sauce helped both the noodles and the pho. The worst part of the meal was realizing that the table was filthy. After using up my napkin trying to clean it, we asked the one person working to wipe the table with a damp rag. He did so promptly, but that's one thing you really shouldn't have to ask for. The amount of food was barely enough for me, and my husband left hungry. We weren't thrilled about ordering anything else by that time. Maybe we caught Shasta on a bad day, but it was disappointing. We won't be making any special treks to zona 4 to try again.