Tapa Bar — Restaurant in Victoria

Pros: Great ambiance and the staff is super friendly and attentive. I left a 20% tip for that reason only. The food is overpriced and sub par at best, which brings us to the cons.

Cons: first of all, if you're worried about Covid maybe avoid the Tapa Bar. It was packed and the pandemic and social distancing seemed like a distant memory in that place, the masked servers notwithstanding. The table that was offered to us at first was closely flanked by people at other tables and there was barely enough room to pull out the chairs. We opted for the bar but were quickly flanked by other patrons there as well. At least everyone huddled. I thought it was ironic that there was a "No Vaccine Card" protest a just few meters away. Places like this remind me why it's unfortunately become unavoidable.

As for the food, what we tried was below average. The eggplant dish was totally bland, with a tomato sauce that tasted like slightly thinned out tomato paste. It was terribly acidic (hello heartburn!), bitter, and the flat tasting eggplant slices didn't help. It needed, garlic, salt, flavour of any kind. I found myself happy at the fact that they only give you three slices (for $12!!!). The goat cheese topping it didn't work with the rest of the dish. The chile con queso fondue is tiny and you barely get any poblano, spicy yes, but boring and left me feeling completely underwhelmed (and a little queasy). At least there's a big pile of boring supermarket tortilla chips to fill up on. The calamari was passable and we thought we'd order more to try but it just felt like throwing good money after bad. We just opted for the chocolate espresso mousse (it'd be hard to make that taste terrible) for dessert, which was tasty, but $9 for what was just about a quarter cup it seems. The food bears no resemblance to actual Spanish tapas. Meh. Won't bother again with this place. Maybe we didn't order the right things but for $50 + tip what did we have to order to make this an ok experience? It seems like just another Victoria restaurant that manages to skate by on mediocrity because tourism allows you to do that, or people like it because it's what's on offer here, or maybe the Sangria pitchers help you not notice the...

WORST service I’ve ever encountered. Group of 3 of us went on Saturday, we are between ages 27-29, fyi. Place was pretty busy due to the comedy show later in the evening (we heard numerous tables discussing they were attending afterwards). Server was standoffish from the start, dropping waters with barely a hello before she turned away and left. Waited to order our drinks and 5-6 appies to share for the table. Food was alright, nothing to write home about, the drinks were fine. The sole and only time she came back to check on our table was to ask “another round?” To which I personally responded “ I’M alright” and she immediately turned away and disappeared again. She did not even wait to see if the other two people in our party wanted anything, and mind you their drinks were empty as well, but she assumed my response for myself was for the whole group.. Along with all of this shortness experienced with the server, we started to think that she was perhaps overwhelmed at the amount of people there that night, so I began to watch her interact with other tables and noticed that she was extremely attentive to other tables, asking people how their meals were, friendly, and to young and old tables alike- this left us to all to realize it seemed like she was intentionally ignoring our table. After all our food was delivered (came in two rounds, with the second round being brought out by other bussing staff) we then waited another 20 mins after we were done to try and get her attention for the bill. She would come close to tend to tables around us and then not look our direction and walk away. My husband then decided to get up and go to the hostess up front to ask for our bill, explaining we have not had our server come by after waiting and waiting. Hostess was nice and apologized, and the server even walked by a couple times while getting the bill up front and never acknowledged that my husband was paying.

We are foodies and like trying new places, however the atrocious service at the Tapa Bar left quite a bad taste. We will never be...

My partner and I have been to Tapa Bar many times over the last 7-8 years. We always order the same two items, polo armanda and grilled kale, along with one or two other items. It was served with focaccia, which was cold and stale - if there wasn't sauce to soak it in, it would be inedible. Typical of most restaurants, the portion size has reduced while the price has increased. This is not ideal but fine as long as the quality is good. Something was definitely lacking this time around. Maybe it's the quality of the ingredients or the skill of the cook. The food was mediocre, and certainly decreased in quality over the years. When we first started coming here it was a 5/5, now I'd give the food a 2/5. Potatas bravas were great and saved the meal, but it's impossible to mess up fried potatoes. The service on the other hand was absolutely horrendous. My partner and I were the only people in the restaurant at one point and my partner still had get up to ask for a new water (was served one with floaties). The server didn't come to check on us once, the only time she came to the table was to deliver food and drinks. She didn't once look over to our table to visually check if waters were low, or if food was done. We waited a few minutes after eating for her to come bring us the bill, that we had stand to get her attention. That may not seem long, but the restaurant only had 4 patrons, including us, and 2 servers. The service was unacceptable, the food has significantly decreased in quality, and the prices don't justify it. We're long time customers but we...