I will be recommending this place to "Gordon's kitchen nightmares"…read more
As you arrive to Catalina II the staff promptly suggests you get the 10 tapas + wine bottle/1L of Sangria/1L of beer offer. We considered getting separate tapas as we know from experience that these deals often feature not the best of what the restaurant has to offer but decided to go for the middle way: we went ahead and gave the 10 tapas a chance but we also ordered 2 tapas on the side to see if they were much better. Okay, so here we go, in order of appearance:
1) Seafood salad
- Canned seasfood mixed with salad and cream. No salt, no nothing. Also contained pieces of what appeared to be almost rancid fish.
2) Murciana salad
- Canned tuna with crushed tomatoes and raw onion. Honestly just those three thrown together. Swam in an ocean of oil/water mix. No salt, no flavour other than the tuna-water. Topped off with half an egg.
3) Sardines
- Two pieces of canned sardines in "olive oil". Somewhat similar in the flavour to the Swedish traditional dish "surströmming", which if you YouTube it soon will find out that it's rotten, fermented fish. It's pretty good but I'm Swedish so I'm partial to these flavours. Other people - stay away!
4) Patatas ali-oli
- We identified the aioli as being the EXACT same kind we've gotten at another place so know we both know they use a store-bought variety. The aioli has a small hint of a fishy taste but the potatoes where boiled nicely. A plus! (Probably canned potatoes)
5) Fried camenbert (ordered on the side)
- Actually OK. Wasn't served with anything sweet on the side, we'd have preferred a fig marmalade or at least a strawberry jam. The cheese was fried in sunflower oil which made the flavours less apparent that if it'd been fried in butter. Overall OK, 3/10.
6) Asparagus and mushroom omelette
Canned mushrooms thrown together with an OK fried asparagus and egg. Some salt was apparent in this dish although it tasted horrible.
7) Ratatouille
Tasted EXACTLY like the gulasch I would get in elementary school. Vegetables with meat stock and paprika seasoning. No salt, no flavour other than that of meat.
8) Baby squids (ordered on the side)
- OK fried squids but served without aioli or anything. We had to ask for a sauce on the side. WE HAD TO ASK for a sauce for a huge plate of fried food. You know what, I just love gulping down my salty and bready foods without any form of lubricant.
9) Croquetas
- Store bought pieces of "jamon croquetas". Tasted like flour fried with jamon chips flavouring. Absolutely disgusting. Also were fried probably sometime around opening that morning. As soft as a baby's bottom.
10) Sausages & potato
- Almost threw up from these. Expected some kind of chorizo, got some kind of english breakfast-inspired spanish mini hot dog kind with soft "fried" (read: fried this morning) pieces of potato and minimally sauteed onions.
11) Fried cod
- If the previous fried foods were fried this morning these two huge pieces of fish were fried last week. I pity the poor cod that had to die in order to have his sides thrown away. I had one bite. No, half a bite.
12) Chicken wings
- Served in the same meat/paprika stock as the ratatouille. Tasted like gulasch marinated chicken wings that had been done way too long. Were supposed to be fried, they were 100% cooked in the oven.
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All in all this was the worst restaurant experience of my life. We honestly mashed some food on our plates like 5-year-olds in order to make it look like we actually ate so we wouldn't make our server sad.
At least the wine made us drunk and the sangria was alright. Our son enjoyed his spaghetti bolognese so that was a nice addition, only that he got 1/2 serving for €4,50 whereas he normally will get 1 full children's portion and have enough for lunch the next day.
Worst. Restaurant. Ever.