La Lonja del Mar — Restaurant in Madrid

The experiences was extremely terrible, not only the food and the service, but also the confused price and menu. First, don’t trust the target on the menu which writes things like “best oyster in Spain”, there are so many other restaurants provide much better seafood with much lower price. The seafood served in all dishes were not fresh at all, it doesn’t seem like the quality of seafood that would be served in Madrid at this price. Second, there is a huge problem with the price and menu that can be count as cheating customers. They have two sets of menu, which one is showing the normal dishes, but another is a huge “conspiracy”, I ask for a dish with a picture shown on the google map by the customer who used to eat at this restaurant, they said ok. But they didn’t tell us that the price of this dish is count in another way in a different menu and they also didn’t tell us anything about how many each seafood was added nor the weight. They told us nothing about this dish. But when it comes to pay for the bill, we found that we don’t know how the payment of this dish goes as it completely didn’t mentioned by the servers nor the menu. And then, they took out another set of the menu said that they count in that different way. This was really fraudulent and tricky.

WHAT IS EVEN MORE FUNNY is that when we try to ask for a reasonable reason for why this happened that we were not provided with the second menu with clear price. The servers gave us very ridiculous reasons like “our boss told us not to show this more expensive menu, because this will give customers unfriendly experience”. And what is even more unexpected is that when we ask is it a right thing that the restaurant supposed to provide the accurate menu with clear price of each dish for the customer? The manager said “ NO”. They continue to justify that they are right to not to provide the full set of menu to us with clear prices on. AMONG ALL THE COMMENTS SHOWN ON GOOGLEMAP, this is not the first time that these things happened. It doesn’t...

MENU IS TOTALLY MISLEADING! This has absolutely nothing to do with a language barrier because we were able to communicate with them in pure English. The menu stated “paella valencia minimum of 2 people”, so obviously we would have perceived that as one paella would be good for 2. However, apparently we misunderstood this because they kept justifying the fact they served and charged us for 2 large pans of paella because the menu said “minimum of 2 people”. First of all, the second paella they served (which we did not order) was an entirely different one from what we ordered, so even using their logic, that makes no sense. If we were meant to order a minimum of 2, why would you serve a completely different dish? The whole staff apart from the manager started to come out including those who did not even serve us! They were butting in saying things like “you have no reason sir” and “you don’t look at me, I walk away”. I’m not sure what he meant by that, but please I’d gladly watch you walk away because you weren’t even the one who took our order nor made our food, so what’s your business here? Even the chef came out to say “we bring you squid paella and you give it back because you don’t like”. Perhaps it’s because we didn’t order it! Apart from that, they even charged us for an extra large bottle of water when we ordered and only finished one which they knew of too. We asked how many bottles we ordered to which they asnwered one then we showed the receipt saying otherwise. This whole experience was just so frustrating so coming here to see other reviews showing that this isn’t the first instance of something like this was validating. On top of that, the paella was not even good so making us pay 60 euros for 1) something we did not order 2) subpar food is crazy. We’ve had way better during this trip for a much more reasonable price. Overall, just avoid, avoid, avoid. Don’t waste your time, energy,...

A new winner! La Lonja del Mar belongs to the Lezama (Alabardero) group, located at one of Madrid's most emblematic areas right next to the Teatro Real (Opera house) with beautiful views to the magnificent Palacio Real (Royal Palace) on the Plaza de Oriente. One immediately senses their experienced and international approach to professional service and excellent food. Our group consisted of 6 friends, we arrived "early" for a Saturday evening at 9:30 and were seated at our reserved table. La Lonja is richly decorated and the setting is laid out on 2 floors with the bar and reception area downstairs, and several cozy dining rooms and the kitchen on the first floor. The menu is short, clear, and refreshingly transparent. No need for lengthy explanations. The wine list reflects the same philosophy, with well known, quality labels. Our orders were taken efficiently, and our dishes arrived quickly. The generous portions are very nicely presented. The young chef likes to return the attention of each dish to its main ingredient in a pleasingly traditional fashion with emphasis on freshness and superb quality. No complex sauces and creative inventions. While the restaurant reaches full capacity by around 10:30 PM, the attentive service may occasionally be too busy attending other customers, replenishing your wine glasses may be slow at times, but we had no problem to serve ourselves.

La Lonja del Mar may still be ironing out certain unevenness in service, but they deserve our fullest...