El Cau Vinos y Tapas — Restaurant in Chiapas

We stopped at el Cau for tapas and wine. The wine was ok. They had some Spanish options from Rioja, and a Malbec from, I suppose, Argentina. They had a house red from France, it was sorta like a Beaujolais, a mild red without a lot of tannins, very drinkable but not a lot of personality. It was good but not great.

The tapas was sad, there’s no other word for it. Every tapa came on a plain slice of baguette. One had some Serrano ham, another had what looked like Vienna sausage over caramelizad onion. Another had a slice of Spanish chorizo, that was the best tapa but it wasn’t much, even that was just bread with a bit of sausage on it. There were other selections which I honestly couldn’t identify what they were, which were dry and tasteless.

The food completely lacked imagination. It felt like the cooks didn’t really know what tapas look like. It’s not good enough to take a few grams of something and slap it on some bread and call it tapas. Are most tapas even made with bread?

We also ordered a Spanish tortilla which was not in the Spanish style at all but in the style of a Filipino tortilla: essentially it’s scrambled eggs fried in oil like a round fritter, stuffed with a little ham and flipped over in the pan. Filipino tortillas can be tasty (when stuffed with a bit of lechón kawali or picadillo or crab) but this was also quite bland, lacked salt, and so dry we needed that glass of wine to get it down.

It also took more than 30-45 minutes to get food on the table after ordering. There were only 2 servers and they were working so hard! They were also bussing their tables. They needed more help and the kitchen needed to get on its game better.

I hope they take every chance they get to improve their food...

Nice atmosphere but really bad service. In the beginning I was super happy of finally finding a gluten free beer (Daura de España) on the menu. The waiter served it and immediately poured it into a glass. She wanted to take the bottle away with her but I asked to see it (to be sure it really was gf). Then I saw that the lables were have scratched off and looked like from another decade. And with a look at the „best before date“ I wasn‘t even wrong: June 2018! I told her and she just mumbled „sorry“, went off and wanted to bring another beer as there was no other gf left (that one was not gf, so I refused it) Only one waiter for the front part and she obviously wasn‘t capable of so many people. We bearly had to beg about bew drinks abd we waited a long time for the check. Though there was a nice guy playing with the guitar and...

Had a decent meal, although I wouldn’t bother with Patatas Bravas because it’s not an actual dish- rather just potatoes with aioli separate.

Although meal was good, ending was disappointing. I’d miscalculated my tip, so moved it down to 10%, which in my opinion was fair given we were there for a short time. Waitress audibly and visibly looked angry, decided to give me change in $1 pesos as a result. Pretty sad, debated taking away tip but just decided to leave it.

Foods ok, quite expensive and service is really quite poor...