Sartoria Panatieri | Pizzería Barcelona — Restaurant in Barcelona

Walked in as a party of two on a gloomy Tuesday afternoon for lunch last week. My brother and I walked in around 2:15 pm. We were not acknowledged by the host for about 5 minutes. Finally she approached us and asked if we had a reservation, we did not. Given the fact the place was only half full and only open until 3:30 pm, I figured we would be able to get a table, which we did, but under the host’s conditions of having a hour limit at our table and having to sit at a communal table. These conditions were odd because there were many open tables and they closed in a hour and 15 minutes, yet she felt the need to tell me we could only be there for a hour. There wasn’t a communal table active until we were seated. Not a big deal, we sat down. Shortly after we are seated, two other Arab men were seated at our communal table. It was a 4 top table they made into a 6 top by putting chairs at the ends of the table. This wasn’t an issue for me initially. I ordered the olives, the tomato salad, the charcuterie board and two pizzas. I noticed the two guys sitting at our table were adamant about not having meat, I was assuming they are North African and were avoiding pork, yet our charcuterie board, filled with pork was placed in front of them instead of us, when I corrected the runner and it was placed on our half of the table, I then saw we literally had no room for the two pizzas we had coming. Keep in mind, all of the surrounding tables around us were empty. It felt like they just put all the Arab men at one table, I felt like I was Black in Jim Crow times for a moment. Frustrated by their mistake, the lack of room we had, and the fact we were surrounded by empty tables, I flagged down my server and asked if we could move to our own table. He left for 5 minutes to go speak with the manager, only to come back to say they have some reservations coming in but he can ask his manager, which is what I thought he did already. He then comes back with the manager and says they were able to move us to our own table. I said great, let’s do it, but then the manager came and got in my face and told me that they are always busy and that I need a reservation to get a table usually. I tried to explain to him he was not being hospitable, but he seemed he only wanted to start a scene in the middle of the dining room, so I just said ok dude whatever and went to my new table. At this point, I feel like I was discriminated against and felt like I had to shrug off a fight. Keep in mind, I own two James Beard nominated restaurants and have worked in hospitality my whole life, I always go out of my way to get people seated and feel comfortable. The host and manager here do not get hospitality. Maybe the accolades this establishment has received makes them feel like they can treat guests rudely. Keep in mind they had about 20 people working to tops 30 people in the dining room and we did not see one smile. On to the food…… I did not care for the olives at all, which is actually so hard to mess up, I love olives. They tasted fishy which threw me off and the bowl had an equal amount of caper berries to olives, which was also odd. The tomato salad was boring and the tomatoes themselves lacked color and were not ripe. The charcuterie sampler was good, I particularly liked the head cheese with the focaccia it came with. The focaccia was tasty but a little chewy and doughy. Then we got the spicy chorizo pizza and the seasonal padron pepper pizza. The chorizo pizza was fine, and the padron pizza was just a straight miss. The padron cream they puréed had no business being the base sauce for a pizza and overall it was bland, the sausage on the pizza was the only thing that was seasoned, even the cheese was somehow bland.

Most of the staff here either looks lackadaisical, entitled or just miserable. To the staff who act entitled and pretentious, remember, aside from the irrelevant awards your work place has received, at the end of the day you work at a place they serves flat breads, don’t take yourself so seriously, instead embrace...

We have been traveling to three countries in Europe this summer and Barcelona is our last stop before heading back home. This place was one of the recommendations from my family but we have been unfortunately experiencing very bad services with the hostess and our server. First there was a server delivering food to one of the customers sitting outside area that stopped us from entering to check in with the hostess. Secondly, when we finally got to be able to enter the entrance to check in with the hostess she stopped us from walking into the restaurant. Then they couldn’t find our reservation which was the last thing we woulda hoped for. We were hot from walking to the restaurant and it was ridiculous that we were being held up outside just because they couldn’t find our booking on their iPad but I showed them the confirmation email from them. Until there was another staff came up and tried to use email to find but in a vain. The staff said to wait as he had to call to office to check, at this point we were still being held up outside. The lobby was spacious and I understand that it might be too crowded if they had all the walk in customers there but we were not the case. We got there right on time but still being held up outside!

Finally he came out to let us in and apologize saying that their system sometimes has issues with the name on the reservation. My thought was why couldn’t you guys let us wait inside while they were checking with their back office when we had a reservation proof.

Then we were being seated and because my son was hungry so I quickly called for waiter to give me recommendations while my husband took our son to wash hands. The waiter was rather rude and simply said he doesn’t know what we want. He even tried to turn back and said to me to take a few minutes to read the menu first however, I insisted to have him to recommend anything so I could order sth quickly. The waiter was unable to reach nor to get his attention especially he always had his back at the tables he served. Therefore, I tried to get his attention when he was facing towards us. He got frustrated with me by saying “please do not talk to me when I am talking to other customer”. I was like hello first of all you shoulda offered us water when we first sat down but you didn’t; and you always has your back at your customers, how was I supposed to know how to get your attention.

Our experience with the service there was really awful but the food was fantastic. We did tip another server who was professional offering us with a very good quality of service and also with a genuine smile too so we decided to tip that server but not the server that was assigned to our table.

This restaurant has 3 different locations and the one we went was on Calle Provença 330...

Location/ Accessibility: The restaurant is located in the middle of Barcelona, and can be reached in foot by various close by bus / metro stations within minutes. It’s easy to find and upon walking in you are directly greeted.

Atmosphere: You can directly tell, that someone put in a lot of thoughts into the design and interior décor. The whole restaurant has some kind of industrial vibe to it and we especially enjoyed the open kitchen. The whole restaurant promotes/ toilet were very clean and after booking a late night slot we witnessed the whole kitchen staff closing down and cleaning the open kitchen area throughly.

Service: You are directly greeted, upon walking in and shown to your table. The whole staff are extremely attentive and well organised. Although you don’t have one server designed only to you, you will be taken care of the whole Time.

Food: Now the most interesting part, we discovered this restaurant after it received the “Best Pizza in Europe” Award for its pizza with cherry tomato’s, mozzarella and basil hollandaise. So of course we tried it and we could very well understand why this was an award winning pizza. The basil hollandaise was more intense than a pesto would’ve been and complimented the almost sweet cherry tomato sauce very well. We also tried the pizza with Mahón cheese, fennel and honey. The combination of cheese and fennel on the soft pizza dough was delicious and the honey was brought in a separate container so it could be portioned to ones linking. In addition the our pizza we also had the focaccia, which shared the delicious fluffy dough that we received with our pizzas. Next time we’d probably try a different appetiser since it was very close to the pizza crust. But nevertheless delicious. The drink card includes any different red and white wines, there’s something for everyone.

Price: The price was very reasonable, we payed about 25€ per person after sharing an appetiser. Very fair price.

Additional: The whole restaurant promotes the idea: From farm to pizza, using only fresh (and locally?) sourced ingredients. The whole restaurant seemed very sustainable, we were given clean reusable napkins, there was no unnecessary packaging or...