BISTRO SANT GERVASI — Restaurant in Barcelona

I have passed this place many, many times. I’ve always wanted to try it. The decor looks cute, the reviews are stellar, and so I took my wife there for Valentine’s Day last night. I hate to say it, but what a disappointment. The service was… odd. Not slow necessarily, but disjointed. When we arrived, with a reservation, the server that spoke to us kept us waiting for quite a while, and about five minutes later told us that it would just be a few more minutes to confirm my reservation. I had no idea what that meant, but we stood in the doorway for seven minutes. But that would’ve been easily forgiven had the food been stellar, or the ambience wonderful. Maybe they got us on a bad night, but they sat us next to a table of six people that couldn’t have been louder or more annoying. I’m assuming drunk (or perhaps just inconsiderate), this table proceeded to scream for the entire time we were in the restaurant. No waiter seemed to notice it care enough to ask them to keep it down. The staff, in general, seemed pretty apathetic. Again, if the food has been explosive, you wouldn’t have heard a word about any of that. So let’s get to the food. Sadly, average at best. Weirdly bland. It was like whoever was in the kitchen forgot to put lime or spice in any of the dishes. They tasted like competently made, flavorless, traditional Thai dishes. We got the lettuce wraps, a soup, a curry and one other thing. That should tell you everything. It was last night, and I’ve already forgotten the fourth dish. We kept waiting for the next one to step up to the palate plate, but they all struck out. I’m not trying to be harsh here, but this is the best review I can give the place. At least our Valentine’s Day...

We had higher hopes for this restaurant as I had been craving Asian cuisine since landing in Spain. We arrived when the restaurant had just opened for lunch - no other customers were there. The waitress asked if we had a reservation (this seemed arbitrary as the place was empty) and then sat us down. Mind you, no other customers were asked the same.

The food was mediocre, at best. I was relieved to have anything with tofu. We ordered the fresh spring rolls with tofu which were fine aside from the vermicelli being undercooked inside. For the main entree I asked for pad see ew with tofu, and specifically requested extra vegetables to be added in. The waiter said “sure, no problem”. When my dish arrived it was a large pile of mostly rice noodles, a handful of tofu cubes, maybe 2 slices of mushroom and cilantro. The flavor profile just wasn’t there. Again, it was a welcome change to eating just Spanish cuisine but don’t go with high hopes for...

This was a pleasant surprise and that's why I'm giving 5 starts although it would be more like 4.5. We walked in without reservation and the waiter accommodated us on a table which he inmediately cleaned. He made us aware that they were missing one member of the stuff so things would be a bit slow, I do appreciate being forward about this stuff, and to be fair they were a bit slow but not too bad. Food was tasty and good value for money given the location. One of those local restaurants that add a lot to any neighbourhood There is nothing fancy, don't come here expecting to be blown away, it's just well cooked, well served, good attention and reasonably...