Terrassa Martínez — Restaurant in Barcelona

To the owners of Terrassa Martinez I welcome you to read my other reviews. You'll see that I truly take into account the setting, time, and context of my experience and wholly base it on what is presented.

Why one star?

Service:

Anyone in the industry hates to hear this, but my wife and I have been in hospitality as FOH/BOH for over a decade. From mom/pop restaurants to working with Michelin star chefs. We can see when a server is overwhelmed and prioritizing their bigger paycheck. But it wasn't simply that, our server forgot our drink orders 3 times, even after she acknowledged it the first time 10 min after receiving our food. After acknowledging it the second time, she said she'd bring the wine as complimentary as well as some olives, none of which ever made it to the table. We literally never got our drinks.

Also, though we don't speak Catalan, we obviously spoke Spanish and didn't need to be told what a Mejilla is. I was even going to crack a joke about "volteando la otra mejilla", but her questioning quickly stifled it. The worse part is we were in the middle watching her give better, quicker service to two larger tables who were well into their meals.

Food:

Positives - The burger was well cooked and juicy. The side of aioli was light, flavorful and went perfectly with the meal. The bacon was tasty even on its own. The scallops with tiger's milk had nicely balanced flavors; a great appetizer. The croqueta de mejilla de ternera was flavorful and unique.

Negatives - It was the smallest portion of fries I've ever seen with a burger. And they were starchy with no crisp, like they had been frozen.

The lamb chops were so skinny it was laughable. At one of my jobs, we serve passed lamb chop hors d'oeuvres twice the size. They were tasty though.

The stuffed Calamari was palm-sized and tasted like a block of salt.

Even after no drinks were served and the main part of the meal a let down, we opted for dessert. We were surprised to see Mille-feuille on the menu--though it's misspelled. Having just been to both Italy and France, We thought it fun to give it a try to compare. Another let down.

On the most basic level, there was absolutely no puff in this pastry. Flaky and light was replaced by flat and crunchy; creamy and rich was replaced by whatever the opposite of that is. And, you can see from the pic, it's bite sized.

I've never encountered a place with so many low-star reviews that I actually agree with. Service is inconsistent at best, and serves small portions for an undeserved premium.

This was our most expensive visit to a restaurant our whole trip with the worst to show for it. Yes, you serve hundreds a week, but from the looks of it, it's people who can afford to not care about the level of service or food...

Beautiful scenery terrible food and service. We went there mainly to try the Paella and enjoy the views. Big disappointment. The Paella was ABSURDLY SALTY, but what was even more absurd, was the answer we got when we complained. The waitress took the whole paella back to the kitchen and less than a minute after, came back with it… according to the “chef” the paella was at its point of salt, so that “saltiness” my companions and I tasted, was supposed to be the delicacy of the other ingredients. Once we argued back, they didn’t offer any solution other than taking it away, NOT REPLACING IT. So we kept it because I refuse to throw food away, specially an overpriced meal.

Leaving the saltiness aside, the seafood quality was also disappointing. The entire Paella had 4 small shrimps on it, the mussels came without the shell, maybe frozen mix will be my guess. We also ordered the leek with goat cheese and walnuts, a real fiasco when it comes to quality-price; and a pretty average Russian salad. The only good thing was the bread with tomato.

As mentioned before, beautiful scenery with nice views, which we didn’t get to enjoy because they located us in a table inside, even though I politely asked if we could sit on the terrace (where they had empty tables), they said it was reserved, which makes no sense given the fact that when you make the reservation through the website, it clearly states that the spots are confirmed, not the location inside the restaurant, but what bothers me here, is that the table outside with the nice view, stayed empty for the almost 1h30min we stayed there. Important to mention that the staff seemed incredibly nice at first but after all this happened, I could see the personnel making fun of us. Pretty shameful.

That’s it. The first visit, was also the last. Definitely an...

Nice location, and good ambience and quality of the food seems good. However, the service is slow and disorganized and the prices are a bit higher than comparable restaurants (but that would not be an issue if the service were impeccable, which it was not)

I was at the restaurant with my wife, monther-in-law, and my daughter. We were not super hungry, and so we only ordered an arroz negro for two, ensalada russia, calamares, and two kinds of bread (requested with the tomato and olive oil on the side -- pan con tomate). The ensalada russia and calamares arrived without issue, and were tasty. One bread dish arrived without the side of tomato and olive oil -- which we requested from the waiter, but the tomato and oil was never brought to our table. The other bread dish never arrived.

Furthermore, after waiting for one hour and 15 minutes, our paella had still not arrived. It appears that it may have been delivered to another table, which ate some portion of it before "realizing" that they hadn't ordered it and then they returned it (we could see from our table the dish served to the other table, partially eaten, and returned). At that point, were were tired of waiting and requested the bill for what had been served to us and asked to cancel the arroz negro. Edit: reduced to one start because they repeatedly had this review removed .

The manager handled the situation very professionally, and prevented what would otherwise have been a one-star review -- although my wife didn't get a chance to try the arroz negro, as we then left at that point. Perhaps we'll return to try the arroz...