La Sala Rossa — Restaurant in Montreal

DO NOT GET FOOLED, Sala Rossa's restaurant is no longer the great Spanish restaurant that it was back then, it is now a very ordinary Mexican restaurant. I called to make a reservation for 4 people on a Saturday night (as the restaurant used to get quite busy on weekends), not knowing that they had changed owners, concept, etc. They didn't even care mentioning it on the phone. Got there to meet my friends, the place was empty so I felt something was off but took off my coat nonetheless and sat down, only to realize from the menu on the table that it was a completely different restaurant. Oh well, we were already sitting, hungry and looking at the menu so we figured we'd stay and try it out. I love Mexican food, and I also know that it's fairly easy to make delicious Mexican dishes. And with so many good Mexican joints in this city, it's hard to imagine you can mess it up to the level this restaurant does. We had the 'special of the day', which was the Chiles Rellenos (a cheese stuffed green pepper) served with rice and beans. Let's say it was anything but special, it had no taste and the serving was really small. All side sauces (salsa) were served in tiny little bowls with tiny little spoons, we had to keep asking for more, and although I'm not 100% sure, I believe they charged us for every little refill. Same for the chips (or nachos), I believe they charged us for every refill. Because, not only was the food bland, but the bill ended up being huge! To be fair, I realized that only later when I was already in the subway, feeling robbed and pissed, I should've had a closer look at the bill and asked about it, 'cause it just didn't make any sense. So on top of everything, I believe we were overcharged. Still, I put two stars on there because the staff was nice (although the service was somewhat sloppy) and the room is still kind of cosy, the way it was back when it was a really good restaurant. Final word : I will never go back and will try hard to forget about this...

If you go to see a concert, this place is really nice. I would like to say the same about the food and the service at the restaurant but I can't. Food was ok, nothing extraordinary and the bartender was quite insulting. At our arrival, we wanted to order some bottle of wines and the waitress told us we could go directly at the bar to order some and ask to be bring at our group table. Not only the bartender made us carry our bottles to our table and insisted that we pay right away and not at our final bill with the rest of our purchases like normally. So after we paid, the bartender got pist off because we didn't leave exactly 15% on tips and had the guts to call us tourist that here in MTL it mandatory to leave 15% or more. That attitude was...

NOTE: About the resto downtstairs, not the excellent venue upstairs! Unfortunately not possible to provide less than one star, or else I would. I organized a large group event in this space and have never been treated so horribly or disrespectfully as I have here. Truly sad to see a once solid MTL institution fall so far. The service was downright rude, and the food was simply not enough for our group - when in previous years, we have organized the same event at the same restaurant, under different management, with great results and certainly enough food for what we paid. We ended up losing our partnership on this event thanks to this horrible experience....