Pulperia A Garnacha — Restaurant in Melide

So the food was ok in total, the octopus even fine according to my friends (since I ate something else). What bothered us was something else though: While the three of us where sitting down, the waiter already appeared with a basket of bread. Standard restaurant stuff, I would say. So we had our meal and when we recieved the bill we discoverd by accident, that they charged us 3x1€ for bread. Since I don't speak spanish, one of my friends adressed this topic to the waiter. He explained, that since we where three people, they put bread for three people in the basket and charged 1€ each (this becomes important later, so put a pin in that point). When my other friend engaged the conversation, expressing his confusion regarding this issue, the tone of the conversation changed. The waiter asked my friends, where there are from and told them, that people from Galicia normaly eat bread with there meal (what's the point?) and that he had dinner with a lot of important people from Bilbao, for whatever reason. So here is the thing: If you go to a restaurant and order some food, you wouldn't be surprised about an additional basket of bread, right (or is my sense of reality falling apart here)? Maybe they don't offer you some bread, so if you want some, you need to ask for it and they might tell you, how much they will charge you for it. In our case (and I'm making a very wild guess here, but I assume that goes for any other person eating here) they brought the bread to our table without us ordering any and then charged us for it. One of us doesn't even eat bread. At this point I consider this a scam. I don't even care about the 3€, take it for gods sake. But I am not very fond of getting ripped of, while knowing, that this is happening to maybe hundreds of people every day, without most of them even noticing it. In the end they reduced the price for the bread to 1€ in total, while serving a basket of bread to a single woman on the table next to us, containing more or less the same amount of bread as our basked had (unfortunately I didn't bring my calculater, but I think I can count roundabout 6 pieces of bread). You remember me telling you to put a pin in a point earlier in this comment? You can go back to that pin now and do the math.

All in all: if you have the kink of secretly getting ripped of, this is your place. This rip-off itself won't hurt your bank-account and you can still enjoy an ok-ish meal. Have a...

Food was below average at best. Service was atrocious. Atmosphere was okay, but it's touristy, so you expect the kitsch. I've gotten used to generally poor, unattentive and indifferent service throughout Europe over decades of traveling here, and especially here in Northern Spain over the past 5 weeks I've been here, but I was still surprised at how bad and rude the service was. I'm a middle-aged guy who considers himself fairly polite and I was traveling with two slightly older folks from Alaska who are polite almost to a fault - and yet the server came by and literally dropped our plates of food on the table in front of us.

Fine, it's a tourist trap (I mean, I took a picture of myself next to the goofy octopus statue), so no real surprise there but still disappointing. Even more disappointing was the food. The signature pulpo was not very tender and even a bit rubbery. Totally lacking in flavor. I've had it a half a dozen times in the past two weeks in other places throughout Galicia and every single one of them was multiple times better. When we asked for salt (typical accompaniment for the pulpo) which was brought automatically to most other tables in a big tin with the expected large granule salt, the server went and brought us back three small paper packets of takeout salt. The french fries seems like they were barely ever dipped in oil. The cod was half bone, half meat, and almost no flavor. About the only thing that was even average was the grilled pimento peppers.

I have a half a dozen other examples, but this review is already too long. Just to add insult to injury, we are walking the Camino and even though not in a rush, didn't want to wait around for the half hour we had to wait to get our check. The place was not overly busy, they just chose to make us sit there. Absolutely would not recommend this place to anyone for any reason, better options in this town I think, but certainly in the surrounding areas....

Such a bad experience. If you like to spend euros to gain a bad day, welcome!!朝聖者之路的朋友們，請改道勿入此處，價格不算實惠，但是服務會讓您終身難忘.

During a long period I stayed in this beautiful country, I never take a order of "filete". If I want to have some steak, I always order chuleta or Chuleton, because the filete is a bit dry and lose of tender of my taste. Today the waiter gave me the wrong dish and insist this was exactually what I ordered, the one I was been wrongly served, eventhough I point the picture said I want "chuleta" when I took the order. I didn't touch any single piece of the steak because of the bad feeling, and I don't want to have a arguments during the trip. I know the waiter may have to pay if he admit the mistake, but now the restaurant have loss the honer.( How dare he explained that the only difference of those two was only the T bone, I doubt there are any idiot spent more euros to eat only a T bone) Shame on this place.

"""WARNING!!!!""", if you unlucky step in this mystery forest in a burning sunny weather, at least TRIPLE check the orders whoever you talk to, you may get some dishs you never want, specially a tall and thin waiter.

Wish you all have a good trip, I will NOT recommend this place at all, eventhough they have some good pulpo(not worse then other restaurant near by, but trust me there are many other choices after we had a relax and comfortable dinner in another restaurant 50 meters away, and cheaper…). Don't let this kind of service level ruined your days. Have a look of other comments about Their "WONDERFUL" service, I think the waiters don't care about how you idiot tourist feel at all cos they are famous now because of relatively well location and most of you guys only come to this town once, "eat whatever we sale and shut up". Once you come in, you may be the next one who win the jack pot.

Their services are cheap, but...