I love tapas and had wanted to come here for a long time, given the reviews. Actually, I wanted to go to the New Haven restaurant but when I saw that this branch had a Living Social deal, I went for it.
In general, it was "meh", especially compared to Tasca in Boston and even Barcelona in West Hartford, much to my surprise, because I had expected this place to be better than that.
On top of that, we felt it was very overpriced for what they give you. We ordered a pitcher of red sangria and got what seemed more like half a pitcher of diluted boxed liquor store sangria over a ton of ice with small bits of fruit in it. For $18.00, that was atrocious.
We started with the goat cheese and fig tapas. I could have gone to Whole Foods and bought the same goat cheese with fig in it and smeared it on a piece of limp, dry, tasteless, uncooked white bread and paid less and enjoyed it more. This came with no oil, nuts, or sauce of any kind on it. Meh.
We followed that with the Serrano ham. While the ham was good (all 6 tiny slices of it), once again, it was draped over that same tasteless, almost stale, uncooked puffy white bread with nothing else on it. Again, I could have done this myself. In my experience, cold tapas over bread usually comes on something akin to crostini. Every bite should be a morsel of heaven, not this.
For our hot tapas, I ordered the sea bass, which was one of the better things we had. It was cooked properly and came over a nice potato vegetable medley, although I did not taste any raisins, pine nuts or mushrooms in my portion, just carrots and potatoes. I also didn't feel it had enough seasoning but my husband thought it was just right. I also enjoyed the piquillo peppers stuffed with sausage, which came in a bowl with some kind of sauce resembling thickened chicken broth. I presume the yellow color meant it had saffron in it, but to tell the truth I didn't taste any saffron. I didn't understand the broth because it did nothing for the dish, but at least the peppers had a nice smoky flavor. We ended with the pork belly sliders, which, although sliced very thin, were probably the best thing we had, but again, served on a puffy white bread roll that didn't taste like it was even toasted.
At this point, although still hungry, we decided to call it quits because we weren't loving our experience and didn't want to rack up too much more of a bill. Thankfully, I only paid $15 for a $50 Living Social voucher, and the bill came to $64, so I wasn't too upset. If we'd have paid full price I would have been more upset as I didn't feel the quality of this food lived up to those prices. My husband, who is not as acquainted with tapas as I am, agreed with me that the food we've had at Barcelona in W. Hartford is much better than this. I consider that significant because while I like Barcelona a lot, it has never stood out in my mind as stellar. So that should give some indication of where we'd rank this place. I have a feeling the New Haven restaurant might live up to the hype better than this branch, but given my experience here, I doubt I'll be going there any time soon, which is sad, because ever since it opened I've been wanting to try it. I will give this place a second chance, though, as I bought a second voucher thinking I was going to love it. I might try some other things on the menu. Sometimes it's just a matter of ordering the right things, although I've had many similar things on Barcelona's and Tasca's menus and have loved pretty much all of them.
We couldn't argue with the service, though. We got there early on a Saturday and our waitress was very attentive, plus the food came out very quickly. In fact, I think they were too attentive because the bus boy kept wanting to take our plates away almost before we'd taken our last bite, which is one of my restaurant pet-peeves. Although we left after 6:00 p.m., the place was not even half full, which surprised me. Then again on a lazy Saturday in the summer anything is possible, or it may pick up later in the evening. After we left we GPSed a Dairy Queen since we were still so hungry. Oh well, I'll have to give it another try. read more