Restaurante Paganini — Restaurant in El Tanque

I would not recommend this restaurant for the following reasons:

1. in the opening of the restaurant there is a sign warning you that if you take photos of the "art" inside they will charge 5 euros - entirely unnecessary and not very welcoming - just let people take a photo - all publicity is good, no? Even this review(!)

2. the owner appears miserly, in the sense that they employ only one member of staff (in the kitchen), despite best efforts, the owner simply cannot cope with all the competing demands: the chefs bell, taking orders, fetching drinks, cleaning tables, settling bills. It is simply too much, so the service is slow and not systematic - we waited 20 mins just to order, 35 mins before we received a drink.

3. when we wanted to leave, we were so fed up of waiting to get attention, we went over to the bar to catch the attention. She tried the card machine numerous times (maybe 7 or 8) and it wouldn't work, for us or for other customers who also tried to pay (anothrr 15 mins - all this time every other customer in the restaurant had to just wait as only one member of staff means when something goes wrong evrything grinds to a halt). There was no plan b or apology, we were just told to wait and wait before finally the chef in the kitchen came out to sort. Overall we spent over two hours to receive 2 pizzas and 2 cans of coke.

4. For all the effort, ultimately the pizza was fine/good. The topping were nice, but I thought the base was a little tough, and coupled with the service, and stressed atmosphere, it was not worth it.

5. the atmosphere of this place is flat as the owner seems more focused on signs about charging you to take pictures and the numerous CCTV cameras watching you eat, than creating a good environment. Some people have been generous in previous reviews about the "quirky" and "character" decor but we must call it for what it is: dated and tired. I can't imagine anyone under 50 years of age would enjoy it here unless it was in an ironic way.

The one positive is, to give the owner credit, she never stopped running around and did allow us to charge our phone. However, this is only a plaster over a much bigger wound.

Avoid and drive on.

Ps. Edited to take into account the owners comments. For the record, we explained we couldn't pay by cash as we only had 12 euros - we were certainly not trying to "get away" with anything. We paid once the card machine was working, but this failings of this restaurant were obvious to us way before that incident. The defensiveness of the owners reply should only demonstrate why this place is tired and dated and will likely not change. Their approach appears to be to insult the customers ahead of admit failings. Please do not waste your money here, the other reviews are being far too nice about a shoddily...

We went on a Monday and they told us the pizzas are only available for ordering on a weekend. That should be in the description and "Pizzeria" road signs everywhere, otherwise just misleading.

Since pizzas were not available, we ordered garlic bread, lasagne and a seafood spaghetti.

The garlic bread was a plain white store-bought sliced bread microwaved with some garlic sauce. It was soggy and soft upon delivery. For the love of God, at least put it in the toaster, it can't be THAT much more expensive..

The lasagne was... I can't describe it any better than just "dead meat". No tomato sauce and tasteless, soggy thick chunks of meat circling in your mouth, reluctant to go down. I've never left anything with cheese and meat uneaten but I did not touch that lasagne after a few bites. When the waitress collected our dishes and saw my mostly untouched plate, she didn't even ask what was wrong with the lasagne. Probably she was already aware how bad it is and needed no further confirmation.

Husband's seafood spaghetti was mostly okay, though the sauce was a bit watery.

On a positive note, interior is lovely to look at, far better than boring walls.

This restaurant really needs to get a grip on their lasagne and transparency of WHEN pizza actually...

Total disappointment. We drove by many times and decided to stop by for pizza. We arrived at 16 o'clock, but the waiter said that the oven would only work from 19. She suggested us to order something else from the menu, except pizza. We choose spinach and cheese ravioli and gnocchi “4 cheese” . The dishes were brought in 5 minutes (!). before that, we heard the distinct sound of the microwave. And it turned out they were just heated in the microwave 🙄😬For the Place that titles itself as an Italian restaurant, I think it is absolutely unacceptable to serve microwave food. Besides , it was not home-made. On the same day we saw the same gnocchi and ravioli in the Mercadona Supermarket 😬😬😬 for 1.90 euros. A portion in a restaurant cost about 11 euros. Your choice is yours, we certainly will not come again and will not advise anyone. No Restaurant in Italy, where we have been traveling for 10 years, did not dare to serve us a semi-finished product heated in a...