Bar Puntal — Restaurant in Barcelona

I was very excited when this new restaurant opened. Having spoken to the staff and the owner I was 100% in agreement with their philosophy of serving only local seasonal food.

Although I fully support their philosophy. The customer service is considerably lacking!

Having had a couple of evening Tapas meals there by myself to check it out I was satisfied that although they were still establishing their dishes on the whole everything was delicious. For that reason I suggested to my friends birthday brunch / lunch One Sunday.

Due to work commitments we only had 12 pm-1 pm to meet and eat.

We met at 12 midday to be told that they could only serve ham sandwich, cheese sandwich pastries and home-made juices until 1 pm

Unfortunately, the birthday girl is coeliac and cannot eat gluten. Leaving her with zero options.

We requested a salad for her and we were refused.

We then suggested they serve the sandwiches without the bread for her. Effectively a salad.

She would have been happy to pay for what would’ve been a salad but she literally only got the contents of the sandwich without the bread.

As this was due to be her main meal of the day we asked if it was possible to serve the contents of a ham sandwich as well as the cheese sandwich. A plate of ham was subsequently bought. It was a full plate of ham for which they charged us €18! And still charged the full price for the contents of a cheese sandwich even though it didn’t have bread.

Our forth friend who arrived a few minutes after us ordered a ham sandwich and a juice. She was told that they were no longer serving sandwiches as they were preparing to serve Tapas at 1 pm. This meant a full 35 minutes without serving food. As she had no other option she simply ordered one of the delicious sounding juices. After a 20 minutes wait she was told the juices went available either!

In addition the pastry I had requested heated arrived cold and they rudely refused to heat it for me.

All in all it was a disastrous birthday meal. Perhaps they treated us like this because we were speaking in English and they only want locals to visit their restaurant. However three of us are locals. And one of us will be celebrating our birthday at the restaurant opposite on Friday. None of us will ever be returning to El Puntal!

In reply to the restaurants response to my review.

Yes you advised us you weren’t a brunch place. We accepted to stay there on the basis that we would have two sandwiches, a warmed pastry, a bowl with rocket, sun-dried tomatoes, ham and cheese in it and two juices. Let me remind you, we were one sandwich & one juice short, you refused to warm the cold pastry which I took home to warm myself. And the bowl with a few salad leaves and a measly amount of cheese and sun-dried tomatoes was underwhelming to say the least.

My job is customer service. You did not provide good customer service...

I genuinely can't believe how poor our experience was here. We went some years ago and the place was buzzing with a full restaurant - it's largely a bar now and there were very few people eating..

Our waiter made THREE mistakes.

1 - he brought us some sort of mackerel/anchovy dish we didn't order. I told him we didn't order that and he told me it was the morels dish. I told him morels is like a mushroom and he told me it definitely wasn't. The morels dish then arrived (the next course) and it turned out he gave us some random dish rather than cuttlefish.

2 - we ordered pork cheeks and he brought glazed pork chops.

3 - we ordered tuna toast and he brought two plates (and charged us for two plates) even though we only ordered one

I tried to explain all these errors and his reply when we went to pay was "OK". That was it.

I literally pointed at each of the items on the menu as we were ordering and he still made this many screw ups. Zero attempt to rectify any of them either.

Steer clear of this place, it was 100+ euros sunk on a sub par meal where they got everything wrong. We will...

We had a wonderful time at Puntal and would love to return for any occasion! I recommend reserving a table, as the place can fill up quickly. However, don’t worry if you can’t make a reservation, there is plenty of seating indoors, outdoors, and throughout! The decor and ambience is wonderful; perfect blend of rustic and modern. The food, though a bit pricier than expected, was delicious and served as they were done! Very fun menu with clever and unique foods. The sauces were perfect; I couldn’t tell exactly what was in them, but every sauce was the star of the dish! Service was quite fun at the opening hours, since the group of friends who own the restaurant are also serving and setting up! They are very kind and explain the dishes well. I loved their carrot juice, beetroot risotto, and squid. I had such a wonderful time with my friends, I will be recommending this restaurant and its perfect location (in close proximity to delicious Joncakes and cafes) to all my friends. Their bathroom is also very clean, much...