Fuegos de Apalta — Restaurant in Santa Cruz

From the outside the place is wonderful: nice setting, amazing view on the vineyards (with possibility to eat literally surrounded by them), waiters well dressed and fine furniture. Definitely a 10! All this magic disappears once you actually eat. Average dishes, by far not one of the best entrañas I had in my life. Despite the reduced menu and the limited number of tables, which means no great chaos in the kitchen (also given the sizing of workforce in there), they were not able to accommodate a small change in the side of a plate - and restaurant was not full whatsoever (many empty tables). Bread was served really cold; given the place, an easy and not time consuming suggestion would be to put it 30sec in the oven before serving it. It is a small treat that from restaurants that pretend to be classy, I would expect.

Also, I had made my reservation more than a month in advance, asking for a table directly looking at the vineyards. When I got there, they offered either an interior one or the one next to the bathroom door with view at the vineyards (but the side overlooking at the main building and factory area). I hardly believe that all the people that were sitting at the tables I had kindly requested had actually reserved more than a month ahead.

So, the restaurant shows no flexibility when it comes to small changes, no caring of the customer that makes special requests with such long notice. I think that it has a lot to improve, it sets high standards from the outside, and it crashes expectations afterwards. In terms of the barbecue, I read many other reviews about the average quality of meat, I can...

Brilliant… extremely fresh food and good service. I tried the world’s best food in many places, this is one of the top restaurant. First feeling was ‘wao so fresh’ instead of ‘wao good cooking skills’ even the food are cooked in a very good quality. The freshness taste of the ingredients made me speechless. Very dedicate flavour because of cooked by the basic ingredients and herbs. The style of the dishes mainly focus on freshness feeling, taste is not strong, but feels so natural. Top class of freshness of the ingredients and home made pasta, feels like eat at home with a very good chief, and a full set of herbal garden. I chose Carmenère 2017 made from MONTES vineyard. It tasted like very fresh, very tiny bitter taste and not too sweet. A very strong grapes taste, taste very similar as a grape juice, the different is the texture is red wine and it’s fermented. Feels like medium plus body. They also have a free horse carriage ride. It was so good to have some fresh air and view around the vineyard after a great meal. Really worthy to go...

This place has the worst service experience I've ever had (actually the only one). I was at the door without reservation just an hour before closing doors knowing that I might not get a table but though it might worth trying.

At first some of the waitress was very kind and told us to wait for our table to be ready regardless of not having a reservation (making a quick look there were at least 5 free tables) then the host lady came with a pretty rude attitude to say that we couldn't get a table because we didn't have a reservation, I explained what I was told before, she didn't give any further reasons even though they had free tables. She didn't bother, said nothing and deny the service.

This place is full of that "exclusive" bs which is becoming normal in the valley. And by the way, this place is not a big deal, it's just happened we were touring the wineries and just stopped by.

Wanted to write this review to warn everybody that if you want to visit.. make a reservation (not because it's actually that great, they always...