El Caldero — Restaurant in Madrid

If you consider coming here to eat some of the best upscale Paella in town, turn around and run the other way.

I am generally rather generous with reviews on restaurants and I am not very demanding. So I don't take it lightly in saying: this was the worst and saddest restaurant experience ever.

We were the first guests at 8pm and the waiter was already extremely annoyed. Nothing about the way I or the elegantly dressed women in my company conducted ourselves other than not speaking Spanish should have triggered what we perceived as almost hating to serve us. We should have known to get up and leave in that very moment. We stayed, what a mistake.

We spent an average of 25€ for shared starters and paella excluding drinks or desert (we skipped desert and got the hell out of there). The starters were well prepared but rather sad for the price. The paella was a disaster of food scraps and frozen seafood thrown into overcooked rice. Just tasted like what a fish market smells like.

Again if this had been half the price and on the tourist drag during lunch I would have brushed it off. This was however supposedly an upscale restaurant but the only thin upscale was the price. Every waiter was pissed off, rude and dismissive. Food was slopped on the plates and water spilled all over the table while serving. I have seen about everybody in the restaurant being treated similarly or worse.

So, if you are considering coming here, just don't. It's not worth the money for the average food and I don't like to pay money to be...

I was really debating on posting but I am honestly surprised by all of these high reviews. I read that the grilled calamari and paella were recommended, so we ordered both. The calamari was good with this tasty tomato topping. The paella though, was way too salty and the rice was a bit undercooked. I could not finish my plate and had to wash it down with water. Also, it’s fairly pricey since they charged 18.50€ per person even if only one person wants the paella. I cannot confirm if this is true, but the aioli trio plate we had looked like it had been sitting out for a while (ours did not look as “fresh” as some of the pics I’m seeing here) and I saw the waitress dumping some old aioli back into the container bowl - I went to the bathroom and when I came back, I could see the 3 bowls of aioli just sitting out on the counter, no cover. That’s not very sanitary to me, but I guess no one has gotten sick. Some of the reviews also mentioned this, but I don’t like that we were charged 1.90€ per piece of bread (that we didn’t ask for!) and it was hard and stale and difficult to eat. There were only two other parties there when we came, so we were attended to pretty quickly. The service and atmosphere were great though. Maybe the other dishes were good, but don’t waste your money if you’re looking for good paella, which was what I was specifically looking for and was quite disappointed. As a big foodie, I am happy to pay for good food, but...

The food is OK. Full stop. The service was horrible. We were seated promptly after our reservation (which is not needed, it was empty when we arrived at 9) it only filled up around 10:30pm. This place has every opportunity to be great if they didn't rest on their laurels. The decor is good but one wall is full of visible holes, dark corners of the restaurant, mediocre decor. LNo music in the background. Don't expect people to keep coming back because you've been around for a while. That will just bring you down. So let's begin. The bread sits on your table well before you arrive to allow flies to have their snack (the bread is charged to your table automatically btw). After about 10 mins I had to ask for the menu. They apologized. Some tables get the traditional olive tapas, apparently not for a table for 2. After the meal which again was just OK (I am Hispanic and have had Paella many times in my life so trust me) I asked for the check 3 times, the last time literally having to walk up to the front and ask for it. Please raise your standards and trust me, you will be a "must" for any visit...