GOYA GALLERY RESTAURANT — Restaurant in Valencia

We were a party of four and we booked a table. When we arrived the hostess just ignored us even after we said hello. So we had to stand there until she decided to asks us what we wanted to what we said we had a booking. She took us to a table in the back next to the bathroom and quickly asked us what we wanted to drink as she was walking away. I had to ask her to stop so she could at least tell me what beers she had, a terrible start to what was to become a disgusting experience.

A waiter arrived, with half of our drinks since the rude hostess was to busy to even had gotten our full drink order so we asked him for the remaining drinks and then started to ask about the paellas choices. After some questions he said "sorry im new, i dont really know much" so we just asked for two seafood paellas for starters a patatas bravas and fried calamari.

The food:

Patatas bravas: lukewarm, bland, mediocre sauce, and evidently reheated in a microwave. BAD.

Fried calamari: we had to send it back because it was extremely salty, impossible to eat. They did it again and what can i say, i had better fried calamari in a local bar for 5 EUR, this was totally boring and overpriced. TERRIBLE

Paellas:

We ordered two seafood paellas which arrived lukewarm-cold. Rice was burnt and flavor was totally flat. They were supposed to be different paellas but the only difference between one and the other was that one was just saltier. Ah and both paellas also arrived without any serving spoon so we had to wait for someone of the waiters to notice us waving our arms so they could bring us the serving spoons.

As a bonus track to the terrible service we were with a baby sitting next to her mom on the wall bench, at one point of the meal the hostess came with another party of four people to be sitted at the table next to us and without asking anything she just started to move/throw the baby things to our area of the bench and as she was doing this the baby carrier landed on top of the baby. Absolutely careless and rude.

I had tried several restaurants since i came to live in Valencia and this was by far the WORST experience I ever had in Valencia and made it into my top 10 worst restaurants experiences around the world. I would return if the food was good even considering the absolutely terrible service but there is nothing worth about this joke of a restaurant. I heard they are on the Michelin guide? what an embarrassment for other Valencian restaurants holding this accolade.

Do yourself a favor and dont fall for this trap, if you wanna try a great paella go to real restaurants that respect the food like: Levante, La Riua, El Embrujo del Carmen.

Avoid...

First of all - I ate a lot of very good restaurants worldwide and what all of them have in common: they make you fell like you are at home or at a friends house. They welcome you and give you the feeling that you are the most important person in the room and that your choice based on the menue is always excellent.

That's unfortunetely what the Goya does not do!! In no way! You enter the restaurant (with a reservation!), no one is with you. No one recognizes you, no one speaks to you, welcomes you etc. etc. etc. You just stand there, wait and feel like you are disturbing their processes (or whatever) and the staff is running around. No one gibves you a smile, a heartly welcome - anything. That's more then sad I I really cannot understand how a good restaurant nowadays is able to avoid this basics of customer treatment. Anyway, after 10 min. we got a table which brings me to the next point: If you are non spanish speaking person - you'll have issues with this restaurant as in our case no one really could speak at least that kind of englisch to explain the menue to us. Of course the haver a englisch menue, but only vor starters. The real menue is on a QR code online and only in spanisch, you so really do not know what to order unless you use your phone and a KI to translate the PDF :) That's not a deal breaker, but for a restaurant in that price category - I expect that non spanisch customers are also able to order their menue properly.

Finally we could order our food with a lot of stress and misunderstandings and the food is really good. The quality is good and the waiting time for the food is also OK. So no issues here.

But throught the whole dinner, we always had the feeling the team spirit between all the staff isn't verfy friendly and also - each person does everything. There was no clear structure who is your waiter, who takes the drinks or menue order, who's doing the bill etc. Everyone is doing everything which gives this restaurant a bit of hectic touch.

To summarize to the owner of the GOYA. PLEASE teach your staff the basics in how to treat customers that come to you and pay you a lot of money for spending a nice evening. Good quality of the food and a nice restaurant is one thing to have - but more important - treat you customers in another way - otherwise you will lose more and motre customer by time!!

Very sad that such a no-brainer needs to the said to a restaurant...

We recently dined at Goya Restaurant in Valencia, which we chose based on positive reviews and a recommendation from our Airbnb host. While we had high expectations, our experience was unfortunately disappointing. The starters were well-prepared and enjoyable, but the paella we ordered was excessively salty—to the point that we could not finish it. We politely mentioned this to the waiter, who acknowledged that the dish should not taste that way. After that, no staff member returned to check on us for quite some time, which left us feeling ignored and uncomfortable. In addition, we were charged for a bottle of sparkling water that we did not order. Due to the language barrier, it was difficult to address the issue directly at the time. We were also charged the full price of the paella per person, despite only ordering and receiving one shared dish. There was no mention of the price being per person, and this is not clearly stated on the English version of the menu. We have kept the receipt as evidence of both the overcharge and the incorrect billing. After our visit, we checked more reviews and noticed that excessively salty dishes seem to be a recurring complaint. This clearly suggests a pattern, not just an isolated incident. For a Michelin-listed restaurant, this kind of recurring issue—combined with poor communication and lack of accountability—is simply unacceptable. Given the poor experience, the quality of the main dish, the unresolved billing errors, and what now appears to be a consistent problem with food preparation, we are requesting a refund or at least partial...