El Mercat — Restaurant in Barcelona

Went around 9:30pm, place is always packed and busy so we decided to try it out. We ordered the fried squid, pig foot carpaccio and fried fish. We got our food in a decent amount of time but our fried squid was overly salty (didn’t even include any sort of dipping sauce with it) and the fried fish was actually fried sardines (which wasn’t mentioned on the menu). Neither my bf or I enjoy sardines and if we knew it was sardines we wouldn’t have ordered it. We ended up forcing ourselves to eat the salty fried squid and left most of the sardines. We waited about 30 mins for our pig foot carpaccio but it never came! Waiter never even checked in on us AT ALL (it was busy so understandable) we got so fed up we asked him for our bill. When we got our bill they wanted to charge us for the pig foot we never got. The waiter agreed to take it off without even asking us if we wanted to wait for it or not. We thought this place would be great due to high volume of customers and good reviews, but overall a horrible experience. We left hungry and...

Conveniently located close to our hotel, El Mercat has a nice ambience with its modern interior.

More than its interior, I am impressed that most (if not all) of their staff can speak English, including the kitchen crew. This is a plus for a tourist like me whose Spanish is very limited. They also provide an above average customer service, being in Spain there is no tip.

Their prices are rather cheap for their portion size. Hence, we ordered way too much for two. We got the Spanish tortilla with brava sauce which comes with toasted bread topped with tomatoes, grilled octopus with bacon, chorizo, Russian potato salad, mussels, fried eggplant and two cocktails. My recommended must try is their grilled octopus. Not only is it good, the price is cheaper than other tapa places we’ve been to (yes, I always order octopus). The rest are typical tapas you can get elsewhere.

Outdoor seating is also available. They do accept credit cards. Menu is available in both Spanish and English. Their wine list is rather...

I attended a birthday party and couldn’t eat anything. Shame on you for pretending to be a modern restaurant and only offering cruelty filled meals. Only a small appetiser of asparagus and hummus were vegan, very disappointing. I am a local and we will not repeat unless you update your meals and make it more environmentally friendly. Also, employees did not even know the difference between vegan and vegetarian. Honestly, it’s a no go.

Answer to the owner: you don’t have to be a vegetarian or vegan restaurant to have the decency to offer those clients at least ONE meal. It’s a change that would benefit your business, some of your clients, animals, the environment and even your profits as those meals tend to be cheaper and are charged higher. Also, I did not choose the restaurant: it was a birthday party and the birthday person felt so guilty for me as I couldn’t eat anything. They will definitely not repeat either and check veggie options...