El Pimiento Verde - Quintana — Restaurant in Madrid

OMG.... what a bad experience. The reviews in Yelp were four and five stars (except two that we didn't see until we came back to our hotel, a block away). We expected better. Attractive dinning room with comfortable seating. The wait staff was professional but not friendly. I speak fluent Spanish so there wasn't a problem communicating them. They were nice enough to address my wife in English too. Good. The food: our appetizer was a artichoke flowers which looked marvelous (sorry no pictures) but was drenched in olive oil (a common thread at El Pimiento Verde). For our main, my wife chose an Atlantic cod (Icelandic cod, which I think is in the Atlantic) that arrived covered in an oily yellow sauce. Under the ocean of sauce, the beautiful white fish was salty and bland (???) One tiny stalk of broccollini, and fresh from a can a few RED pimentos spread across the plate. The broccollini was so tough, she had to use my steak knife to cut it. My Solomillo steak was cooked properly but over salted. Bummer. French fries accompanying the dish were soggy and oily; a trend here. I've had better fries at fast food restaurants, and in many Madrid restaurants too. Did I mention the canned pimentos? Yes, they were on my plate too. We didn't even look at the "postres" (dessert) and that's not like me. For €75, including a glass of wine each, we could have done much better. We travel quite a bit throughout the world and live in San Francisco (Go Giants!) We would not recommend El...

Loved this restaurant. So romantic and beautiful. Fantastic table service. Very well done! Immediately we were served some cheese, crackers, and a warm cream of artichoke soup in a little glass. So much flavor. We were also given a choice of brown or white bread from a basket. The artichoke appetizer was unique and incredibly delicious. I wish I had the recipe. One is enough to share for two people. You must order this. We also shared the croquettes, which were perfectly cooked. Crispy on the outside and creamy and flavorful on the inside. My one critique is with the squid in ink. The squid themselves were perfectly cooked and the rice was starchy and amazing, but they didn’t say they were stuffed. I’m used to Italian stuffed squid with bread crumbs and tentacles. I couldn’t tell what these were stuffed with and the taste of onion overwhelmed and ruined the dish for me. I would have preferred them unstuffed. I also didn’t care for the squid ink sauce which seemed like it had too much flour or cornstarch or some kind of thickener. It wasn’t natural looking or tasting. I would go back and order something else, perhaps the creamy rice with lobster which is a specialty of the house. We were too full for dessert, but the server gave us each two wrapped pieces of chocolate. Everything on the other tables looked amazing too. Reservations are recommended but...

Lovely decor and the young male waiter with the dark hair was pleasant but the food was sadly lacking.. our starter of green peppers stuffed with spider crab was bland and tepid.. it lacked seasoning. For the main we opted for the shared rib eye steak strips, fries and roasted peppers. We asked for the steak to be cooked medium. It was served rare so we had to send it back.. The steak wasn't rested so was very tough and because the rib eye cut was served rare the fat was not rendered down enough. The young female waitress swearing at her male colleague was unprofessional and the background music was not ideal, I wasn't happy about listening to some guy singing about a Fu*ing He .. Not my idea of a nice meal out with my husband. Harsh I know but honest and...