Ikibana | Paral·lel — Restaurant in Barcelona

I can wholeheartedy NOT recommend Ikibana. I had a very weird experience the first time I tried Ikibana in the Borne in Barcelona a couple of years ago. Not only was the service extremely slow and the food average, one of the waiters actually sat in my seat while I was in the bathroom and drank my entire glass of wine claiming he was thirsty! He was also making really strange remarks and talking loudly. At the time I was dining with a friend who was just as shocked as the people at the other tables. We insisted on being offered another glass and more wine but the response was...not really the response you would expect to receive after something like that happens. It was almost like they didn't really care. The entire meal took about 4 hours and we didn't even eat many dishes. I swore after that not to go back. Then, I was organizing a meal for a special occasion with some friends and some of them suggested going to Ikibana on Parallel. I thought I'd give it another chance so I booked a table for 11 people through El Tenedor two weeks before the date of the meal (which was yesterday) for which I received a confirmation email. Around lunchtime on the day of the reservation, I called the restaurant to confim and mention that some of us would be ordering the Menu Restaurant Week. Nobody answered the telephone and there was no option to leave a message. At 19h the same day, a very impersonal email from El Tenedor told me that the reservation has been cancelled - an hour and a half before we were due to be there. I immediately called the restaurant as was informed in a very matter.of.fact way that as I didn't confirm with them via telephone they had cancelled the reservation. So all eleven of us were stuck and had to find a restaurant at the last minute which could fit all of us - that is not easy at short notice on a Saturday evening in Barcelona. A friend of mine who was due to eat with us that evening dropped by the restaurant to speak to the manager about this. The manager claimed to have called me 10 times to confirm the reservation and as she didn't get through, she cancelled the booking. This is not true at all as I checked my call history and there was just one call from an unrecognised number and not one single email. In my opinion, Ikibana needs to cut back on the efforts made to make the place look stylish and focus more on the main values any food lover would attribute to a good restaurant - high quality food and great service. If you like sushi, I would recommend looking elsewhere in Barcelona. There are planety of...

I'm a big fan of taster menus. They're a great opportunity to sample an array of ingredients and combinations, and, executed well, they make for a fantastic experience. I've been to A21 in Helsinki, and The Dairy in London, and these are two restaurants that really nail the whole taster menu experience. But to do well, they take a high degree of attention to detail, and carefully chosen, fresh ingredients. Otherwise they tend to become an incoherent mash of conflicting flavours and tastes..

Now, Ikibana has received a number of positive reviews on here, and so it may well be that my experience was a one-off. A consequence, perhaps, of over-stretching themselves with a complex menu on new years eve. Either way, it would be a disservice of me to overlook sharing my experience from the night I had a couple of weeks back.

It was NYE 2015 and my partner and I decided to check out this venue. The samba music emanating from the restaurant onto the street was one of the main draws, along with the positive reviews here on google. The set-menu appeared exciting enough, and the venue itself was very enticing, seemingly designed with an infusion of influences from Japan and Brazil.

Let's get to the food: The lobster bisque at the start was full of flavour and rich, with a velvety texture, and this boded well. Then onto the sushi, which is where things started to go downhill.

Sushi was unfortunately of poor/average quality, and appeared to have been made some hours earlier. The avocado and banana on top of the maki rolls was black from being exposed to the air, and the sushi was not at the right temperature - too warm. The rice was overcooked, and the rolls had fallen apart. And the liberal use of sweet chilli sauce was amateurish and unnecessary. I know how to make sushi and could honestly have done a far better job.

The fillet steak was definitely cooked, that I'm confident of. So much so that it had turned what should have been a tender, juicy cut of steak into a chewy, stretchy slab of meat.

The waiter was completely uninterested in any of our questions about the menu. Plates were dropped off and picked up with all the finesse and personality of an amazon distribution warehouse.

And this for €340 euros for the two of us.

In summary, a great venue and lively atmosphere, but a complete failure on the main front: the food. With so many Spanish restaurants really pushing the envelope on the quality and complexity of their food (Tickets, StreetXO, etc.), this was a real...

Perfectly average experience.

For a sushi spot, it was average. For a European sushi spot, it was above average.

The interior design is intense. Obviously a lot of money and effort was put into it. It's modern and quite a lot to take in, all in a strange shape, almost like a bean.

I can't say the service was outstanding nor was it poor. It was exactly in the middle. A bit distant and cold, but it got the job done.

There was no warmth in any part of the visit. It was a bit strange. Like eating at a chain restaurant where the staff don't really care but are professional at their jobs. I feel like they just see guests as money, and we are treated as such. I mean, I don't think it's a particularly bad thing. It was just a bit strange. I'm used to that in countries like the USA and UK.

The food was okay. Fish was fresh and tasty. Seasoned and selected very well. Dishes were a decent size. Tuna tartare seemed a little artificial in colour. Either it was treated with preservatives or coloured with beet juice or something similar.

Drinks were strong, which was nice. They made the Paloma very well. I tried the Geisha cocktail, purely for the tiki gimmick, and it was surprisingly strong, but also very sweet. Too sweet for me, unfortunately.

Music was excellent! That I didn't expect. And it wasn't cheesy Asian-style kitsch. It was a solid playlist of electronic beats, like Ibiza chill.

It's worth a stop if you want to try a cocktail and some sushi, and if we had been hungrier perhaps we could...