Gourmet Sensi — Restaurant in Barcelona

Overall, we were not impressed with this place. Seeing the great reviews, I almost wonder if our experience was a fluke, but other tables around us seemed displeased as well. The first warning was that every patron was American, but so am I 🤷‍♀️. The food was just fine. Not bad, but also not good, especially for the price. In fact, it was pretty bland for the most part.

The service was disorganized, and the wait staff seemed very flustered. We came without a reservation and were offered a seat at the end of a large table, which was fine considering the situation. Another group was sat at the other end shortly after. Then, after we were served our wine and water, we were told that they had a table for us— read: they wanted us to move. Our server was gracious enough to move our things for us, but this just seemed in bad taste. We would’ve been happy to just sit at the bar to begin with or any of the several open 2 tops. This trend of unprofessionalism continued throughout the night. Now I do not speak fluent Spanish, so I’m not sure what the situation was, but we watched the manager have what appeared to be a heated conversation (at best) with an employee who seemed to have arrived late in the middle of the restaurant. Again, not sure of the specifics, but not something you wanna see.

Finally after waiting a while, our food comes one dish at a time. We got the cabbage, the parsnips, the lamb, and the ravioli. The ravioli was good, and the lamb was fine. As for the vegetables, they were very bland. We were starving at this point so we just ate them, but they left a lot to be desired. Perhaps we chose the wrong things, but if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, you might want to think twice.

Bread was dropped off twice at our table, and we had to grab someone to ask for it to be taken away twice… Our plates and silverware were also taken away before our final dish came out, and the server thought all of our food had come out. We told him it hadn’t, but there was clearly some kind of miscommunication.

All in all, this place was just fine. Maybe we should’ve gotten the more “traditional” tapas options. Honestly though, the service wasn’t horrendous, but the fact that the food wasn’t good made it completely not worth it.

P.S. it’s cheaper to get the wine by the glass than...

We visited Sensi Gourmet last night, after having it on our list for quite some time. Years ago, we had a great experience at their sister location, Sensi Tapas, so we were excited to try what was supposed to be the better version. Unfortunately, it did not live up to expectations—at all.

We had a reservation with a 1 hour and 40 minute slot, which seemed reasonable to enjoy a full meal. However, the experience was disappointing from the start. The plates on our table weren’t even clean, but we chose to ignore it, hoping the food would make up for it.

We ordered 9 tapas dishes and 2 desserts for two people. The food came out one by one, which made it feel disjointed and awkward. The dishes were, at best, okay. Nothing stood out in terms of taste or seasoning. Most of the food was edible, though unimpressive. One dish in particular—cabbage with tahini—we almost returned completely untouched. We simply didn’t like it, which is fair, but what wasn’t fair was that our server didn’t even ask why we were sending back a full plate.

Still, we tried to enjoy the evening. I was especially excited for our final dish: the seafood paella. It was going to be my first ever paella, and I was hoping for a memorable first experience—especially at a well-reviewed place in Spain. What arrived, however, was a complete letdown. It was served in a bowl and looked more like a soup, with 3 mussels and 1 shrimp floating in the center. My husband is a chef, and he said he’d be embarrassed to serve something like that and call it paella. After tasting the broth, we decided not to eat it at all.

Again, when we sent it back, no one asked why. Not a single question or gesture of concern.

We asked for the desserts and tried to salvage the evening, but it was already ruined. When the bill came, the server casually asked if we enjoyed everything. I said "No"—clearly. Her only response was a disappointed “Umm…” and then she walked away. No follow-up. No effort to make things right.

We paid the full bill—yes, including the untouched paella—and left. We will not return.

P.S. The only things we can genuinely recommend are the sangria, the octopus, and the pineapple dessert. Honestly, nothing else...

We struggled to find it with iphone maps but it’s because we didn’t walk round a corner enough and ended up doing a strange circle. Atmosphere was great as soon as we walked in, the waiters were so attentive and on the ball even though it was busy! Food, we had a little Spanish salami platter with some bread and I really enjoyed this. Next we had the courgette with z’atar and goats cheese, I found this really fresh and tasty but thought something was a little too salty. My partner is not normally a fan of anything with goats cheese but he really liked this dish so something definitely worked! You must try the beef and foie canelon if you go with truffle bechamel, holy moly it was sooo good it made me wish we ordered another pasta dish! We also had the celeriac millfuelle, it was certainly interesting, I thought it packed a punch of flavour which was fantastic if you like your kind of Thai/Japanese katsu limey flavours, although it didn’t taste like a typical katsu sauce. My partner wasn’t a fan of it. We also had the catch of the day fish, the fish was very nicely cooked, i wasn’t blown away by the cumin tomato sauce (we absolutely love curries over in England) but my partner really liked it - I thought such a nice fish would go better with other more classic sauces, but it was nice. If we went again I’d definitely get some other actual meat dishes like lamb or pork that we know we love, because we saw others getting served them and they looked absolutely insane! Overall, amazing place and we would definitely go again to try some other stuff on their gorgeous menu. After five dishes between us pair, our bellies were full we had no space for dessert. Just book in advance to make you get a chance to eat their food, and order stuff you know you enjoy eating anyway! With two drinks each as well, to be honest the overall price was...