Canalla Bistro by Ricard Camarena

I am the first person to write a 5 star review when it is deserved (which is often prompted for here in Spain) but this is the most appalling dining experience I have ever had in my life.

I made a reservation for my mother’s birthday and the morning of, the restaurant called to confirm both that we were going to show up and that it was a special occasion which I appreciated.

Upon arriving, the staff seemed distracted and almost like we were an inconvenience when we got there. It was some time before someone came over to take our order at which time we both ordered the tasting menu dinner with the suggested cocktail to kick things off. We decided ahead of time that we would order the tasting menu to make things a bit special as we had an amazing experience with a similar style menu at El Almacen the week before. Unfortunately, things kicked off in a way that was not only unsatisfactory, but was a serious health and safety problem…

We waited quite some time for our cocktails and what we assumed were ours were delivered to the table next to us who sat down after us. They looked a bit confused but took a sip to try them and confirm that they were not in fact what they ordered (concerning in itself as we later realized that one of the people at that table does not drink alcohol and was served an alcoholic beverage). We are watching all of this occur and as the other table notifies the server, instead of acknowledging the mistake she does not take away the drinks right away and starts arguing with the other staff about who’s fault it was. Then finally accepting that the drinks were not correct, she takes them away and puts them on the bar top and continue to engage in a heated argument with the bartender and other server about the correct table numbers and trying to justify her mistake (while all other patrons are watching and can see what is going on…). Instead of focusing on the guest experience and just making new drinks they spend some time arguing and then she takes the drinks behind the bar (but from our seated angle we can still see what is happening at the bar well) AND TAKES THE SAME DRINKS THAT THE TABLE BESIDE US HAD DRANK OUT OF and brings them over to our table to serve to us. We can plainly see no new drinks have been made. She hasn’t even changed the straw… I can see where the straw was bitten and drank out of. When I asked her if these were the same drinks just served beside us, she raised her voice and talked over top of me as I was trying to inquire and walked away dismissing me.

In retrospect, we should have left at this point but when you are celebrating something special and are caught off guard like that in the moment sometimes the right thing to do feels like to just smooth it over and make the best of it. I am not going to go into such detail about the rest of our experience but it was unsatisfactory on all accounts. After her error it was clear that our server was avoiding us at all costs. Every table around us got top service and we were ignored. I ordered a bottle of wine for the table and it was ONCE AGAIN delivered to the table next to us until the server screamed across the restaurant for the person delivering the wine to give to us instead. While the man who delivered it did an amazing job and was very knowledgable, our glasses were never topped up, everything that was needed throughout the night had to be waived over for despite me trying to make eye contact. The food was just okay… and for such a special occasion and my mother’s last birthday on her last night visiting me in Valencia I could not be more disappointed. A birthday dessert was brought over at the end but honestly at that point we didn’t even want it. This is the only bad experience I have had since moving here and it is probably the worst I’ve had in my life both because of the health issue with the drinks and how our server specifically treated us throughout our experience.