Lou's Street Food, Center Ithaca

As everyone said, eating cheap, that tastes great, and lou is the man!

Eating was good: had chicken wings crispy as we like them, buffalo chicken mac and cheese and beer, costs about $50. the service was terrible, maybe everyone was new or inexperienced? just go if you have a lot of time and geduld. Street seats, the place could be great. we'll try again sometime.

Had dinner with our grownups. We liked the options for vegetarians and also the gluten free! Good selection on drinks like house made lemonade and rotating draft beers.

Tried based on promising menu. Reality was much less promising. At ~3:30pm (well after lunch rush), waited 30-40min to be seated at outdoor table, then after sitting down, another 10-15 minutes before a waiter showed up. Ordered, but were warned that kitchen was backed up so food would likely take 20-30min. Ordered, waited for things to arrive. Drink order arrived 20min after ordering ..and was wrong. Starters then arrived, though wer mediocre at best (the sauce for quesadilla was a bland meat broth). All the while, kept having to wave away the cloud of fruit flies (or gnats) and many wasps orbiting around the dirty-but-fragrant, food-stained outdoor patio (a pressure wash daily would be good, folks). Flies so thick that, several times, flies landed and became trapped in sauce of starter. Asked waiter to be moved inside to get away from the bugs...and while request was honored, waiter was quite brusque about it, and not in the mood to say, for example, Hey, sorry about the flies Inside was not much better--few tables had been cleaned from diners long since gone. Mains arrived...and were awful. For example, found that our Huevos Rancheros Enchilada which seemed exciting from the menu description, lacked 5 of the 8 main ingredients it was supposed to have, and was basically rice and beans with a single unflavored fried egg, and near-zero flavoring. To the owner/manager: putting waiters in this situation and compelling them to repeatedly apologize to guests with Sorry, we're [for the moment] understaffed is not a satisfactory answer. Don't seat far more guests than you have the capacity to serve--doing otherwise is cheating customers of basic good service. Misses on all fronts. Avoid this place.

This was our first visit to Luna. Be aware that you really don’t have a server. You order on a tablet which takes plenty of time if you’ve never been there before. Tip accordingly. There will be no one coming by to check on you. If you need anything extra it’s pretty easy to flag someone down. The staff all seemed nice and professional. The atmosphere has a casual cool vibe with good music to dine by. They put a carafe of water on every table within your first moments which is nice. The food we ordered was an American original burger made plain for my thirteen year old son. It arrived with two meat patty’s stacked on a nice bun. He ate every bit of it which means he liked the flavor of the meat. We ordered him a side of French fries and the portion was large. They’re fresh cut fries and salted well. Between my husband and I we ordered a two taco meal with pork carnitas and a side (that comes with it) of street corn bowl plus a three taco meal of Baja fish tacos with chips and salsa. The pork tacos had a creamy sauce lining the bottom, then pretty plain tasting pork with some radish slices. It needs another sauce or more of the creamy sauce on top. The carnitas tacos had a lot of meat on them. Good portion. The street corn bowl had great flavor. I added some of it to my pork tacos for added flavor and in the end I ended up dipping my husband’s extra tortilla chips in it. The Baja fish tacos were so delicious! They had a slaw, some bits of pineapple and a creme’ on top. The taco size was about half the size of the pork taco so we’re lucky we ordered three. The chips were a little weird. Some of them puffy but very bland. They need a bit of salt. The salsa tasted very good. Our drinks were two strawberry lemonades and one soda. The lemonade is too tart. They need to add more sugar to cut the tartness. Our three drinks cost us $10 which seems kinda pricey for one glass each. My overall thought is this place plays out like a casual dinner spot. The food prices are high for lunch and the wait time for your food is about forty minutes. This just doesn’t really work for lunch. Our total bill with tip was $71 for three but we tipped too generously not knowing at all about the server thing. Would we visit again...maybe...but we’d likely try other places first.