Restaurante Carretas — Restaurant in Santiago de Compostela

If the holy pilgrims who set off for Santiago de Compostela in search of inspiration and a cleansing of the soul knew that somewhere like this was waiting for them, I don’t think they’d bother coming. We were recommended this place by the hotel, and I think back to my conversation with the staff, and wonder if I upset them at all. Maybe this is some kind of Spanish insult.

The food here is bad. Bad enough to challenge anyone’s faith in food, fine dining, or what should be done with a fish. Having sat down, we are presented with huge pieces of bread at frightening speed. The menu is promising, and we order some collard greens and asparagus, a half bottle of wine, and mains of turbot and seafood stew.

The asparagus is a bloated pale white phallus sitting on some lettuce, and tastes of absolutely nothing. It comes with two unidentifiable sauces, one of which I think is mayonnaise. They don’t improve matters.

The collard greens sit in a damp lake of oil (a recurring theme) with overboiled potatoes but decent chorizo. I don’t remember the last time I needed to wash away the taste of something, so I’m glad the wine is good.

The mains are not much better, the same over-boiled potatoes and sad little peas floating around an enormous lump of turbot, that has been cooked without any joy whatsoever. It’s sad that such a disservice has been done to what was probably a nice bit of fish.

We ask for the bill but are given liqueurs instead, which we don’t want. The bill when it comes is €100. You could probably eat for a whole week for that here, if you stuck to the tapas places, three of which we tried yesterday and which were all great.

In summary, stay away, for the...

The food is interesting, putting a spin on traditional spanish food. But the sauces completely smother any flavour, way too much salt. I ordered scallops and couldn’t enjoy the delicate sweet flavour at all. I had to take the sauce off with bread. Then the mains was noodles and seafood. An interesting version of it, lovely presentation. Again, the sauce killed any flavour of the seafood, so salty. I persevered for dessert, at least that wouldn’t be salty. Sadly my traditional crepes were smothered in a toffee sauce and sickly sweet. Someone needs to tell the chef to dial it down a little to let flavours come through other than salt and sugar. It’s a waste of good food and presentation. It was 55EU for one person. At this price I would expect something better. A shame. The presentation and ideas were good, location and...

Are you in your mid-80s, concerned about losing your dentures when you chew, like your food nice and digestible, cooked "properly" for a good length of time, pine for the days when you had "proper" service with a white tablecloth and are generally not a fan of strong flavours?

Then you will LOVE this place.

If you were born after 1960 and are not a fan of food that has been overcooked to the point of obliteration of all flavour and nutritional content, then do not go near here. I've had better food in hospital. The atmosphere is somewhere between nursing home and the identification room at the morgue.

Massively over-priced too.

Note, this is for the restaurant at the back. At the front they were doing tapas...