Restaurante La Cancela — Restaurant in Santo Domingo de la Calzada

We had the best service from the friendly & lovely owner (granted there was only 2 tables of diners that Friday night). The food is not fancy French style but typical Riojana simple fresh & well done as evidenced in the starters like white asparagus with mushroom mayonnaise, roasted artichoke, and duck pate with marmalade. I had a very interesting pig trotters filled with beef & vegetables, that came out rolled like a sausage & looking nothing like a pig trotter! Very creative & interesting dish (first time to try this). My companions had the roasted lamb, beef steak & Bacalao & all proclaimed theirs delicious too. For desserts I loved the alcohol soaked cake as well as the poached pear. My companions were baffled by the cream of arroz con leche, as that was a departure from the traditional style, but they liked it nonetheless. To end the meal we were offered shots, the owner showed us the kitchen & even passed us a discount card to visit a bodega nearby (you get half off the bodega tour, just 5€ with 2 tasting wines & chorizo). All in all, fantastic for a special occasional splurge - bill was about 340€...

Always check the lowest reviews first! THE most unprofessional service by a restaurant I've ever experienced - including publicly humiliating the diner for "not ordering enough for a table" and shouting at them from across the room about it. This father and son duo also pretend to have some sort of exclusive establishment - but Fawlty Towers had more class. Word of advice: mocking a diner's nationality and making them feel uncomfortable is not a great idea if you want them to spend more and stay longer. You wouldn't have to work so hard then at stealing their money with dishes that could easily be whipped up using supermarket products - not a squeezing what's left out of a solitary and clearly dried-up old...

LOVED this place. The best food we have eaten so far on the Camino and you can’t beat the family that runs it. A son and father do the front of the house with the wife cooking in the back and wow, her cooking is everything you dream of eating in Spain. Delicious with impeccable techniques, you know each dish is created with the best ingredients and perfected flavor combinations. We hit it off with the family and I only wish I was fluent in Spanish so we could learn what their story is. Don’t pass this place up. (I only remembered to take pictures of the desserts because I inhaled the other dishes before I...