Maná 75 — Restaurant in Barcelona

We started eating in a table just to finish our desserts to the lounge.

I had made a Reservation to dine there but it was originally for a supper. 3 days before the date of my reservation, i made a phone call explaining that in the end the Numbers of people who was going to come changed and if it was possible to change the time and to have lunch rather than diner. I originally asked for a table at 13:30 (1:30pm) but they told me they can't give me any table as they had to open their lounge at 14:00h (2pm). So I accepted the placement for a table at 13:00. I had asked the lady who answered the phone, if i needed to do anything else and that we were actually celebrating the 18th birthday of my cousin, i asked if it was alright for me to bring a cake and they told me that there was no problem in that but we have to pay for a supplement, for which i agree. In the end we didn't bought any by the way.

To my surprise, when we arrived, they told to my cousin that our reservation was still for 20:00 (8pm), and that they haven't got any knowledge about the changes.

They managed to give us a table with the condition that for the desserts we have to move to the lounge before 15:00 (3pm). We arrievd there in the end 13:15, by our mistake we were late for 15min from the supposedly original time of reservation. As i didn't have anymore choices left, I had to agree with it.

Food was fine, and service was not bad, but this miscommunication between their teams made my cousins 18th birthday, so dull. They have also forgotten about it so we couldn't even make any special moment for the desserts. There were lots of people celebrating their birthday there on that day, and the workers were even congratulating them by singing a happy birthday and so, but for my cousin? NONE, even though I had explained them previously that this dinning was for a celebration for a 18th birthday.

The only consolation they gave us was:

A tapas of 5 pieces of mussels (1 for each) A 1 cup of sangria (for moving us to the lounge) BUT 1 out of the 4 adults that we were, so i can't even say it's a very thoughtful move to appease for...

We went to dinner on the evening of January 22nd with a group of 10 business executives and spouses. Food was great, atmosphere was great, and our server was great. HOWEVER, there was one server who treated us like absolute garbage. She had dirty blonde / light brown hair and she refused to even acknowledge us when we raised our hands so we could place an order for drinks and food. She saw us, turned around and started to talk to a colleague. Instead, a different lady ended up helping us and was excellent. I don’t know if this horrible server didn’t like us because we were English speakers and didn’t want to deal with us. One of our group joked and said maybe she thought we’re American (which we’re not, we’re Canadian - and truly it shouldn’t matter). And for context, we weren’t a rowdy group since we were all business executives and spouses.

When the food finally came and we had 4 different paella’s on the table, we thought it would be nice to have a group photo. I asked the staff that was closest, who happened to be this horrible server, and while I was asking her, she literally waved her hand in a dismissive way and walked away without saying a word. All of us at the table looked at each other with our mouths open in shock. I’ve never encountered such horrible service in ANY country. I was raised in Japan where they pride themselves on exceptional service, so this was beyond disgusting. Then another of our group went up to a group of staff to ask AGAIN for a photo, and this horrible server was among them. She stuck her finger up without even looking up, and walked away. Again, we were beyond shocked.

Needless to say, this really ruined all of our dinner experience to be treated like garbage. And considering we’ll be back to Barcelona for 4 more years with recurring conferences, we will not be coming here, and we will be sharing our experience with other companies that have come for the same conference.

It’s really a shame that such a great restaurant hired somebody who should never be interacting...

I have a group of friends who come pretty often to Barcelona 🥳. Everytime they come, they want to eat at the same spots... These spots are good but, you know, sometimes I like to change. So last time they came, a few weeks ago, I managed to convince them to try a new restaurant that I had spotted on the Barceloneta beach 😎. Unfortunately, one of them had already been to that new place and didn't like it so much so he made us try another one: Manà 75. Well we tried it without him because... he didn't show up 🤨. We thought he had been to Manà 75 before but he had only heard of it. That's why he didn't know that the venue actually is NOT on the beach: it has a view to a parking lot 😤 In general, I wouldn't mind, but the main criteria that day was the beach... 😔 Anyway, it was late, we were there, we had made a reservation, so we decided to stay. I must say that, objectively, the venue is really nice. And the fact that the kitchen is wide open and you can see your rice being prepared is a plus. The restaurant offers a lunch special that we decided to order. Each one of us had to pick some starters and then a main course but we decided to share everything so we could try different items. The starters (bravas, fried fish, squid,...) were, let's say, so-so. As were the desserts 😕. On the contrary, the seafood rice was good 😀 and the meat rice was great 🤩. So as always for the paella restaurants in Barcelona, the conclusion is: eat a paella and skip the rest. Man, I really need to try having tapas somewhere else beforehand and then only order rice at paella restaurants 🙄. Especially when you consider that the starters, the desserts, the drinks are what make the price go up. We ended up paying about €60 per person. It (still) is a lot for Barcelona and, more importantly in this case, it's not consistent with the taste / quality.

Quality & taste: 6/10 Quantities: 8/10 Atmosphere: 8/10 Originality: 6/10 Ratio price / quality: 5/10 Service: 7/10 How I felt afterwards: 6/10

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