Caravelle — Restaurant in Barcelona

Service veryyy slowww! Got seated straight away (yay), nice single seat corner booth type vibe (win), laptop out get working, WiFi on the table with the QR code, (smooth) scan, checkout the menu (decent) tap in the wi-fi - get online, (patterned)... No one has come over yet... All good... Well, I worked for the next 10 minutes waiting for someone to come over, it even got so bad I was staring at every member of staff trying to get someone to make eye contact (which they didn't), so I literally just gave up and figured I'd just work until someone had had enough of me being there...

Meanwhile the music is wayyy too loud and the music is 80's club, but the really pop side of it like 'Radio Gaga'. Fine if you like that sort of thing blaring out while you try to have a chat with your friends - even the waiter kept asking the women next to me to repeat their order cause he couldn't really hear them.

All that said, once I ordered, the food was with me in about 5 minutes (not too bad).

I ordered the Smokey Chicken Shawarma - Lord this thing was oily! Look at them pics, it made a pool in the basket and they only gave me one napkin 🫠 I couldn't see any napkins out anywhere and as I said before, you can't get any eye contact in here, so I couldn't even signal to anyone I needed napkins cause my hands and face were covered in oil and sauce (lol). So I just had to soldier it with one napkin - Apart from the oil and the bit of mess it takes making to eat it, it really hit the spot, I liked the flavours, the textures, pretty filling but you will need to combine it with the fries (which are also nice - seasoned) to really hit that munch spot.

One annoying thing about the menu is they do that thing where there is no £ or € symbol just the numbers... If you know the psychology of this, then you know, if you don't...

I had the house ice tea which was an iced tea with strawberry, which looked nice with a straw, an orange, two... Blueberries?? and ice ... But man ... It's the blandest and most watery iced tea I've had here and I have it every lunchtime. Really disappointed - maybe it needs to brew longer becaue it was very weak.

The price in total came to a little over €18, which for a major city centre isn't unusual but, you know what, it's too much and maybe that's to be said of the prices everywhere. We aren't getting much at all for our money anywhere we go.

Small note - The toilet is all genders, so if you are someone that does find that uncomfortable, it is something to know ahead of going - Nice bit of reed diffusers, antibacterial and hand cream action going on in there though as well as a funky...

Food and coffee are good, but I had this very strange experience. We ordered one of the hibiscus sodas. Then someone the staff knew personally came in, and they brought our two other drinks except for the hibiscus soda: the waiter gave the hibiscus soda to their friend. I reminded the waiter 7 minutes later that we ordered a hibiscus soda. Our waiter then got another one, and promptly gave it to the same friend again. He wasn’t even done with his first one!! Then I reminded our waiter again 5 minutes later that we never got our soda. 10 minutes after that a person we never saw before came to our table and said: Sorry, we only have warm soda. Do you still want it? Literally next to us was their friend who was getting free, ice-cold hibiscus Junos after we’d ordered them 25 minutes prior. I could see the condensation on the can. So strange, and it made me feel unwelcome.

Edit: I updated for clarity, and I want to respond to the manager below. First, thank you for taking the time to reply, it means a lot. The issue though isn’t the lack of cold soda. It’s the fact that your staff gave two free drinks to one person they knew before even giving one to paying customers. I understand offering gifts your friends, I do that too. But it shouldn’t be at the expense of your customers. Why should customers have to wait 25 minutes for 1 warm soda after a non-paying friend gets 2 cold ones for free the minute he sits down and without...

Visited this restaurant a couple of days ago, based on good things that we had heard - walked in and asked for a table for 2 and we were told we could sit at the shared table or wait for a table to be free. I asked how long the wait would be for a table (I was very polite, have worked in hospitality myself for 10+ years) and was told “can be between 10-30 mins” so we sat at the shared table and from that point on the waiter seemed to have an issue w/ us. A table became free and we asked a different waitress (who was beside us at the time) if we were ok to move (we hadn’t placed an order or been given menus, this was all within 10 mins) and she said it was ok - once we moved tables, we were completely ignored - the waiter who initially seated us took everyone else’s order who arrived after us, talking them through the menu and we were sat in the middle of the restaurant being completely ignored. We had to ask the waitress after 25 mins to take our order and she replied “ I was just coming” - nobody checked in after this or even bothered to acknowledge our existence - we felt both waiters were talking about us too. We trekked 20 mins in the pouring rain to try this restaurant and were treated so horribly without having done ANYTHING wrong. A terrible experience and I would not recommend this to anyone that is...