Público - Cuina de Mercat | Restaurante y Wine Bar en el Eixample, Barcelona — Restaurant in Barcelona

As somone who loved to go to Sumac & Mambo which was here previously I was very curious to see the new concept.

Sadly it wasn't the experience I was hoping for but I'll be sharing some feedback which hopefully improves for potential future visits.

Be aware the dishes are very small, much smaller than you initially anticipate. Which overall is okay, but I think making simple and cheap dishes to prepare such as the bread with smoked butter better for an overall better experience might help fight the initial dissapointment of the small plates. The presentation could be improved with a whole small bread perhaps and make the butter spreadable, it was very hard and we initialy wondered if this was just a free "pre bread". The taste of the bread and butter was good though.

Overall the staff is very attentive when you come in to offer you the wine menu and such, but after that you can see the staff isn't as experienced yet, we had some wrong orders brought to our table and also you can see that they aren't really trained yet to be attentive when we look ready to order as we waited quite a bit of time.

Many people noticed the corkage fee which was mentioned when we dined and it made sense as you basically buy a bottle directly from the "store" which then saves you money which then gets covered by the corkage fee. No issues here and it's an interesting concept.

The oysters with yuzu sadly didn't have much yuzu flavor too them, but the duck was good and the oxtail croquettas were definitely the favourite.

However, overall I'd say this restaurant has a great concept and the place looks nice there is quite a lot of room for improvement, but also the adjustments of plate sizes compared to other restaurants in Barcelona with similar foods. The price is very high compared to other places which offer much better quality, pricing and portion sizes. It's okay to ask for a high price if the quality of everything you're offering lives up to it, but at this time it does not. We paid 148 euros for 2 people, with a few starters + 2 mains to share, 2 glasses of wine and 2 cava.

I hope this feedback helps improve this place for the future as I do think it has a lot...

I recently visited this restaurant and while there were some enjoyable moments during the meal, our party left feeling underwhelmed by the value we got for the price paid, and disappointed by the odd corkage fee we were charged.

The restaurant is well decorated and has a nice ambience. The food is of a decent quality, but the portions are small for the premium price paid. The anchovy starter was only 1 anchovy and the rice main, while tasty was not a generous portion.

We ordered a bottle of wine from the restaurant's wine menu and were charged an additional corkage fee, which amounted to 35% of the price of the bottle of wine. This left our table confused as to why we had been charged corkage on a bottle we did not bring to the restaurant ourselves. We spoke to the waiter to clarify this and were told their interpretation of a corkage fee is an amount paid for any bottle purchased at their wine bar and opened in the restaurant. This is something I've never experienced before. We were told that this is a) marked on the menu and b) we were told this on ordering the bottle. While it was marked on the wine menu as a "corkage fee at the table", it is only mentioned on the main page once and without further explanation. Personally, I have never been to a restaurant that charges corkage for a bottle you buy in the establishment... Plus, we were not explicitly told by the waiter we would have to pay this fee. Assuming the concept is the wine should be more expensive to purchase to drink in the restaurant than to take away/ drink in the wine bar (?) then I recommend ammending the prices on the restaurant menu directly to include this fee, rather than adding in additional fees that confuse guests and make them feel scammed by "hidden" fees. We asked to speak to the manager but were told he didn't want to speak to us/he had already left.

Additionally, there were a few small errors in our bill where we were charged for items we didn't have, which the team corrected.

Personally, while I think the space itself is beautiful I wouldn't recommend this spot after...

Quite slow service in terms of giving the menu/taking orders/refilling drinks, some items on the menu were not available (best ones in my opinion), thus the head waiter/manager offered a few positions off the menu and both of the dishes turned out to be priced as the second most expensive plate on the list. Additionally, most of the plates including started and mains contain nuts, so if you are allergic like me, you should be really careful. While we appreciated the advice and the gesture, some of the recommendations were in question. For example, instead of cured beef entree (sounded like carpaccio), we got mushrooms in cream for 26 eur, and instead of magret de canare (duck breast) we got green peas with few slices of butifarra that I don’t even like (23,5 eur). So if the restaurant is planning to keep upselling some alternative vegetable options instead of proper protein main courses, I honestly don’t think it will last long. It was easy to get in and we were treated as tourists I guess. Even though the place has a good selection of seafood and fish, I mentioned that I have already started drinking red wine, however the waiter still believed that cod will go well with it, which is nonsense to me. I’m not sure we will come back even though we live a few blocks away. From my point of view, the former establishment (Sumac and Mambo) was way more welcoming and interesting from the concept perspective. If you are around and look for Spanish cuisine, I’d recommend to consider other options. Tartar was on point though as well as...