Lluritu 2 — Restaurant in Barcelona

It was unfortunately a big disappointment on our dinner before departing Barcelona, left with a taste of heavy salt and oil. The dishes lacked culinary creativity/complexity, and it was too bad we did not get the freshest ingredients to make the food shine on their owns.

The first floor of this restaurant is bright and looks decent, we were super excited upon arrival and prepared for a seafood feast! The second floor was very interesting, we were sat at the corner with dim lights, very down to earth decor and there was an early 90’s electric fan behind our table, resembling a hidden gem traditional local seafood restaurant in Hong Kong. The washrooms were tiny too, again reminds us of Hong Kong. The beer was served in a basic cylinder shaped narrow and short glass, very much like that traditional beer glass in Hong Kong hot pot restaurants. If the seafoods are fresh and prepared right just like they do in Hong Kong then this would be a great dining experience!

But the connection pretty much ended there. Let’s start with the clams, I only tasted salt on the first bite. My son, who would usually leave a pile of shells on his plate - had one while I was still taking photos, spit it out and said “The oil taste funny, these clams are bad.” He finished the meal with a clean plate, if we can call not eating anything as finishing a meal. The prawns were pinky size, the head is not bad, again I felt like getting a salt rush, luckily the beer helped wash that saltiness down. The last prawn was not fresh, it must have been dead for a while or not properly defrosted… the razor clams tasted steamed and had oil poured onto it, again very tiny clams and didn’t taste especially fresh. The baby scallops aligned with the theme of this dinner, yes they are tiny. It’s steamed with chopped onion (something different I guess), again with oil and salt pour on it.

I was looking forward to try the Red Mullet or Turbot (both sold out), and glad the fish was sold out as it makes me shiver to imagine the taste of an overly salted fried fish. The server seemed like decent people so I will give them that, but service was nothing exceptional though so let’s leave it at 3 stars.

The price would bring higher expectations on their quality. I can be forgiving to restaurants with basic decors, yet brings stellar food and real down to earth servers, but this restaurant failed to check off any of these boxes. Definitely not a place we would revisit as that taste of salt still lingers while I am writing...

Good food but service matters

Food quality is good but service is bad, with borderline aggressive behavior from the owner.

We have been twice for dinner in the last month.

On a Wed we made a late reservation (21:30). WE KNOW well that they work with fresh seafood so somehow expect not everything to be on the menu (roughly 50%) by that time of the night. What was disappointing is that they closed the kitchen at 22:00 and nobody mentioned it. We were strictly denied a second order (at 22:02) while they were still serving the tables all around us.

We decided to come back on a Sunday, with some friends visiting and made an early reservation (20:30), 2 weeks in advance. Again this time, roughly 50% of the (short) menu was not available. When ordering, other items were not available either so we politely made the point that it would have been nice to know in advance that one should expect more than half of the menu not to be available. The owner came to table quite nervous and blamed “the girl” (was him) who took the reservation for not advising us and even propose to cancel the table when we already had wine in our glasses. At the end of the conversation he barely apologised and made us feel very uncomfortable with our friends. He could have politely explained that Sunday eve is not the best night to book (not sure what is the point to stay open though..?!) instead of basically shouting at us for making a...

Really disappointed with the food and service here after reading such good reviews. To start, the waiting staff were rude and unhelpful, sniggering at us for an unknown reason, not bothering to read the specials and slamming our food down on the table without any explanation of the dishes. We felt really unwelcome from the moment we arrived and I wish I hadn't bothered! We were seated upstairs which felt like a McDonald's seating area, very bare with no music or atmosphere whatsoever. We hadn't been told about what was unavailable so making our order was difficult, when we did order and our food arrived it was really disappointing. The sardine fillets were bland and difficult to eat as I kept finding bones and scales, the cuttlefish tartare was overpowered by onion flavour and the trio de montaditos was also bland and mainly tasted of the Ryvita-style cracker underneath. The clams were gritty too. Our prawns were forgotten and when I reminded the staff about them they took another 20 mins to come, at which point I had asked them not to bother but they arrived anyway with no apology. They were nice, as was the grilled tuna and the wine. We had 6 dishes between two and I was still hungry afterwards. The waitress also kept wiping her nose with her hand in between bringing us our food. Overall, a disappointing evening considering the money spent and how much I was looking forward to...