This is a beautiful restaurant in Salamanca, where the beautiful people with money dine with…read morefriends and family, or have a swanky date night.
The interior of the restaurant is dark and luxe, with red leather booths surrounding the dining room in the back. Nice paintings and bookshelves adorn the walls, and everything has an expensive, luxurious feel.
We ordered two cocktails to start: a Violetta for me, which was incredibly sour and almost undrinkable; and a Humo for boyfriend which he loved. The Humo came with a waiter using dry ice to create a bubble which burst and erupted into smoke. Very cool.
For a starter, we ordered the Grilled Octopus, which was outstanding. Probably the best octopus dish I've ever had. Tender, but smoky, and accompanied by slices of potato with a dollop of green sauce, which was cool and refreshing, or red sauce, which was spicy.
For entrees, we had the Truffle Risotto and the Beef Shank Wellington. The risotto was among the best I've ever had. Lots of grated fresh black truffle on top of a very creamy risotto. I ate every bite. Boyfriend thought the Wellington was odd, with meat sliced like "stew meat," as he put it, inside of pastry dough with greens on top and served with a beef gravy. I tried it and thought it was excellent; however, he is a Wellington connoisseur. He managed to eat all of it, though.
As this was a Saturday night, there was an excellent live band playing Spanish music, at just the right level of volume. Several customers, including me, took videos of the band.
We also ordered glasses of wine which we did not like; however, we have no familiarity with Spanish wines at all.
The service was very spotty, odd and uneven. We only saw our original waiter once, who took our food order. Another waiter handled our initial cocktail order only. When we ordered wine and a second cocktail for boyfriend, the young waiter who brought out the drinks messed up the order twice. We had to get up and flag down someone for the wine list, who asked our original food waiter to come see us. Then no one seemed interested in processing our bill. After about 20 minutes, we flagged down another waitress to pay the bill, who obliged, but had "this is not my job and not my table" written all over her face.
Despite the good food, good music and nice ambiance, we would not go back. They clearly have service issues; the food and drinks are overpriced; and I did not like the wine or cocktail I ordered (probably my fault for making poor choices).
