Cadena Restaurant & Tapas Bar — Restaurant in Ottawa

This is the second review on September 4th and it’s about food and service not cost. I deleted the first review because as you can see below Cadena restaurant blatantly responded by calling my September 3rd review fictitious. This is the only way I could respond to their lie. My husband and I ordered 5 tapas all together. Empanadas, Béchamel croquettes, Escargot, Meatballs and the Rabbit after our server’s glorious recommendation. His words, “the rabbit is to die for, with the chef’s amazing secret sauce, it’s my favourite”. Now I know his experience is limited. It was a massive fail on the last three. We could taste metal from the iron pan while eating the escargot which we couldn’t finish. The meatballs were average and edible but after we scraped off the briny tomato sauce. But the rabbit? Since I was a little girl and as long as I remember in the past 55 years, I have been eating rabbit. I usually order it when available as it’s not typically offered at many restaurants. Now picture the following, my husband across the table from me, our left hands have secured each end of the rabbit with our forks and our knives in the middle held with right hand are struggling to cut this meat in half to no avail. It was inedible and left on the plate. We made a comment to our server, ONLY AS FEEDBACK and ONLY for the rabbit. In fact I specifically made it clear that I was NOT asking to have 25$ removed from the bill which we were in the process of settling anyway. Simply, the meat was too tough, we couldn’t cut the leathery texture or bite into it, had to be deep fried, or possibly fried frozen and that he oversold it to us. He did not disagree! He defended the chef of course, then went to the kitchen and returned to our table arguing “that’s how he makes it and everybody likes it, just not you”. The bill had already been paid by then. In my opinion a well prepared rabbit should be mouth watering from the aroma and that medley of spices before you even get to the first bite of tender and melt in your mouth deliciousness, leaving you in the end feeling sad when there’s none left on your plate. We declined the sweets he offered. In response to the restaurant’s reply on my first review where they claimed that they offered to remove the cost of the rabbit from our bill and that we declined the offer, is untrue. If they had offered we would have accepted and, because the bill was already paid a few minutes earlier. He continued defending once again by saying, the Sous Chef cooked this; what an excuse. Time to go and never return. I am asking, how could anyone prepare and offer a “shoe in an overly salty sauce” for a meal. We all know rabbit will always be a small portion and I was willing to the already high price of $25, but shouldn’t I be able to actually eat and enjoy the bite and a half that was on the plate?

As you can see below Response from the owner the next day Hi Athena, thank you for your recent visit. While we understand that you did not enjoy your experience, we want to make it clear that we do not deep fry or “deep fry frozen” our rabbit. This is a very delicate meat that requires numerous hours of work to prepare.

On top of the sweets that you declined, we also listened to your in-person feedback and offered to remove the cost of the rabbit, which you declined.

While we always welcome honest feedback from our guests, many of the comments you made publicly were fictitious. We hope you will reconsider this review and give us...

I really hate to diss a restaurant with a 4.6 rating, especially since I rely on these Google ratings to help inform whether I take a chance on a new resto or not. Cadena is in our 'hood and we had long talked about trying it out as we both love tapas. We visited last night, were promptly welcomed and seated and settled on a delicious bottle of Spanish wine (Vina Bujanda Reserva), anticipating it to pair with more deliciousness to come. Not. We ordered four tapas plates; the Calamares Fritto, Pulpo (octopus), Patatas Bravas and Empanada Board (with a variety of chicken, beef and veg).

After a long wait (the resto was hopping!), we were presented with the calamari and pulpo. The calamari were breaded and deep-fried, served with an "aioli" that tasted like straight mayo, no seasoning despite its pink color. The calamari themselves were cold, rubbery and tasteless; again, no seasoning at all. Despite the tastelessness, we thought they might be better if actually hot and returned them to the kitchen. As for the pulpo, pieces of octopus were served on a large slice of bread, along with chunks of potato and more of the gloppy aioli on top. After a couple bites, I hit a flabby piece of octopus which made me gag (think a big hunk of fat) which was pretty much the end of that. When the calamari returned, a good deal later, they remained tasteless, accompanied by their tasteless mayo, although they were hot.

The next dishes to come were the empanadas and the patatas. The empanadas looked lovely and we were QUITE hungry by then. I took a chicken one and found the filling only warm, the chicken dry, and the dough very thick and undercooked in the middle. The beef was better, at least the filling was hot, although it was more sweet than spicy (think BBQ sauce), enrobed again in the very thick dough. Much later, our veggie came out and was possibly the best of the bunch; hot and tasty, but again, more dough than filling. There was a "hot sauce" accompaniment, but there was absolutely no heat to it, think watered-down ketchup. Finally, the patatas arrived, looking more like home fries with the ever-present mayonnaise (sorry, aioli) on top. Again, no seasoning, no flavor.

It absolutely boggles how this resto could rate a 4.6. Although our server was always pleasant and accommodating, the service was irregular and I often wondered whether he had forgotten to place our order. (For example, a table seated after us received their drinks and food quickly and in a smooth sequence...) As for the food, I'm not sure we've ever had worse. Thank heaven the wine was so good; it was the only thing that we didn't mind paying for. We had really wanted to try the paella and chided ourselves for perhaps not choosing well, but at the prices they charge we'd prefer to return to a resto that we know serves great food as opposed to taking another costly chance. If all four tapas dishes were that dismal, it is unlikely the paella would be...

This is a nice restaurant and the food is good, but the prices are very high and it's surprisingly inauthentic.

We ordered the 'traditional' paella because the seafood variant was over twice the price, and the server indicated the sizes on the wall. The one we ordered was the largest and appeared quite small, so I ordered the rabbit "tapas" as well, for a more filling meal, despite being quite expensive. I must say, the server's indications of sizing were very inaccurate, because the paella was almost twice as large as the one on the wall, and the rabbit alone was close to a full meal. Had I known the true sizes, I'd have skipped on one or the other.

The rabbit was absolutely delicious, and I'd consider going again just for that if it were a bit less expensive. The paella was good, and I wouldn't complain if someone served me that in their home, but for the very high prices I was a bit disappointed.

The letdown of the place, however, is its lack of authenticity. My partner is from Spain, and I learned to make paella there because cooking is a main hobby of mine. Paella is amazing, and it incorporates some of Spain's most characteristic culinary features: pimentón and saffron. Pimentón is a smoked Spanish paprika that's very different from what we have here, and chorizo is a very specific type of sausage, not just the Spanish word for any type of sausage. The "chorizo" in the paella here was much more akin to a German sausage, and both the pimentón and saffron flavours were entirely absent. This still made a dish that I was happy enough to eat, mind you, just don't have this and think you've tried Spanish paella.

The other inauthentic aspect was the "tapas" menu. This isn't unique to this restaurant and seems to be how tapas have been americanized, but in a restaurant that's supposed to be authentic I think it deserves to be addressed. Tapas in Spain are small dishes you can get at cafes and bars that typically cost