La Despensa — Restaurant in Arequipa

La Dispensa was both a joy and also a disappointment, but I still would recommend this wonderful restaurant. The reason for my 3-Star review is explained at the end.

The food and atmosphere were incredible, the service was good, but not as attentive as I would expect for this level of restaurant, and the variety of homemade desserts looked unbelievably beautiful, unfortunately we did not get to taste. The good: The drinks were nicely made, we had the Pisco Sour, Blended Fresh Juice and Hot wine and red wine. For dinner we shared a Hiwaiana Pizza and a Malfatti pasta. The pizza crust was flavorful, crispy, had a nice chew and baked perfectly. The cheese and ham were good quality and the pineapple was caramelized and sweet. Overall a very good pizza. The Malfatti pasta was spectacular and one of the best pasta dishes I have ever eaten. It was like a plump spinich gnocchi with the perfect consistency, not too firm, not too mushy. The sauce, a red pepper, olive tapenade with herb blended into a sliky cream that lightly blanketed the pasta and was amazingly flavorful. The added toppings of browned pancetta and grated aged cheese pushed this dish to another level. Super delicious food. The service was acceptable and the servers did explain the dishes well: however they did not check back on our food or if we wanted more drinks. The Bad: We sat outside and enjoy drinks as we waited for an indoor table as we were told a table would open soon. After 45 minutes I went inside to find a open table and asked a host to be sat. They seemed unaware of the situation and I am not sure why we we not notified earlier as we were the only guests waiting. Lastly, and most disappointing part of our experience was after finishing dinner and while still drinking our wine, the server dropped the check. I told the waiter we wanted to order dessert and he said they were finished serving. This is totally unacceptable and a very poor practice for any restaurant. We were not informed that service was ending, nor were we asked if we intended to order dessert earlier. When I questioned the waiter, he just shrugged and left. I have never experienced this at a restaurant before. It was embarrassing as we had a guest and we were looking forward for coffee and dessert. I can not understand this logic? It was only 9:50 pm on a Friday night and there were other guests drinking at an outside table. In conclusion, the restaurant gets great reviews for the food, acceptable reviews for the service and very poor reviews for management and policy. I hope this policy is addressed immediately as it reflects poorly on an otherwise very...

Not recommended. We had a trial of different desserts here including bonbons, an eclair, a mango tart, a lemon pie, and a pecan pie.

Starting with the bonbons, we found a piece of silicon inside, and the waiters did nothing. They were also ungodly sweet and lack chocolate flavors. We did find on our bill that we were not charged for one of our bonbons.

The eclair was standard.

The mango tart was a few mango pieces on top of a coconut flavored tart, but the coconut flavor and sweetness of the bottom layer completely overpowered the almost nonexistent mango taste.

The lemon pie consisted of marshmallows on top of your typical lemon curd but less sour. The pie was alright overall but did however stick to my teeth.

The pecan pie was sweet with a few of the pecans tasting strange, almost spoiled.

Overall, I can not recommend anyone to visit here, unless you are willing to shell out 10 soles for a taste of...

This cafe is one of the most beautiful cafes in an ancient part of arequipa. They saved the atmosphere of this patio and brought their own details. The toilet room was very clean. Oh we ordered chocolate cake and the roast beef. The roads before was better than we expected. Ah the cake was rather sweet. And unfortunately they don't have "saludable postres" without sugar or gluten. But it's really hard to find in any cafe in Arequipa.

The waiter was friendly and attentive (despite of the fact that i was very hungry and asked them very often)) . Very friendly and not...