La Sastreria — Restaurant in Valencia

My father and friends were visiting us in Valencia and we wanted their last evening (last Saturday) to be extra nice, so we reserved a table in what we thought was the most upscale restaurant in the neighborhood. We live around the corner and only had a small lunch here twice or so, so maybe they thought we were tourists who they could treat in this weird way. Either way, I'm not sure what happened, but the service in the restaurant was very disappointing.

We immediately noticed the waiter was not in a good mood, but we tried to make the best of it and create some rapport. He became a little bit nicer... but then it got worse again. He seemed grumpy, a bit stressed out and somewhat arrogant and was not trying to hide it.

Anyway, we ordered a nice bottle of cava to start with. The bottle came and was poured without letting anyone try. Well OK, it happens, no big deal, we already knew this cava and it was good.

We ordered another bottle, which was basically thrown in the wine cooler and the waiter ran off again. Weird. I poured the wine for everyone - no harm done. However, by now the food started to come, in a tempo that reminded me off Lance Armstrong racing up the Alpe d'Huez - too fast to be even possible. We were seated for 30 minutes, and were already at 50% of the meal. I kindly asked the waiter who brought it (a young man a lot more friendly than our waiter) if they could slow down a bit, and he kindly said yes, but after 5 minutes another 2 dishes came. I then asked our main waiter, who brought something, again why it was going so incredibly fast. The response was... how shall we say this.... somewhere between "I don't agree and non-existent"? Unless you call walking away and not taking action, a valid response of course.

Now, we ordered a very nice bottle of red wine of the menu and this time the bottle was poured, but again we did not get to taste the wine first.

We finished the first bottle and ordered a 2nd one.... which was simply put on the table and the waiter hurried off, leaving us to pour the glasses ourselves.

But how was the food you might ask? Well, actually the food was overall pretty good to sometimes very good, except for the Tarbot which nobody really liked. In a normal upscale restaurant I would probably have said something, but since the service seemed to have started a game of hide and seek (with us only seeking and them only hiding), we just let it go.

I wanted to go and order dessert somewhere else, but my friends wanted to try the cheese and order a particular dessert wine that they had seen on the menu, so ok, we stayed. We managed to order the cheese (good) and kit kat (quite nice but overly sweet) but even after calling someone 3 times, we were not able to order dessert wine because nobody came. Oh and about the cheese? Guess what: put on the table, without any explanation or advising us in what order to eat it as good restaurants usually do.

In the end, we had to go and find someone so we could pay our bill, and we left, without anybody paying any attention, saying goodbye, or thanking us for the visit.

It's really a shame, that such a place can have such terrible organisation and waiters. With a good waiter we would probably have spent at least 200 euro more this evening and had a nice time at that. Now, we feel a bit robbed in what was the most expensive dinner of week, but also the worst.

Maybe a better name for the place would be Disastreria?

P.S. as requested I emailed them but never...

Yesterday was my wife's birthday. Unfortunately, what should have been a special and memorable occasion for us ended as a disaster of a night. Do not expect to find hospitality or even a remote sense of care for you as a guest of the establishment here. From the moment we arrived, we were met by a frantic server, who was very short with us, running around causing a lot of stress throughout the dining area. We almost considered leaving because of this.

While ordering, we were told that many of our requests were not available. Instead they began to recommend fresh seafood options they charge market value for (it later turned out that they did have what we wanted, only they chose to continue to pressure us to order what was more expensive). When we didn't show interest in the more expensive dish, the server walked away to seat a new group of people just arriving. Are you kidding me?

After ordering, our hot dishes came out with the cold oysters while our cocktails were nowhere to be found. Who eats oysters without alcohol? We did not get the cocktails we wanted, the waitress did not even know what the name of the drink was that I had asked about.

I have never in my life felt so disrespected by an entire waitstaff at a restaurant. All of them treated us with so much visible disdain and zero patience, as if we were a bother for them. If something is not available from the menu, the apologies should come from the establishment, not paying customers. But instead, we were made to feel like we didn't belong there, or were not worth their attention. We were guests, with a reservation, and hoping to celebrate a special occasion, and yet we felt that they were only trying to take our money, and only served us with rude treatment, or badly masked contempt at best. If they think this is a cunning business practice, the joke is on them. Had they shown a more hospitable approach, we could have easily spent three or four times the amount of money we spent last night there, not to mention the chance of becoming repeat customers. But after the appetizers were served, we decided to forgo the rest of the night there and left. Believe all the other 1-star reviews left here. There are much, much better places in El Cabanyal than this place. Unless you enjoy getting your money stolen right out of your hands, this place is not worth your...

I do not recommend this restaurant to anyone, and I will never be returning. We were paying customers with a reservation, and we were treated like trash. We were spoken to very rudely, we were made to feel like we didn't belong there, and were not worth their attention. They only want your money, they don't care about you. By far the worst place in Cabanyal. The quality of the food can never make up for the lack of professionalism and inhospitable treatment we received.

We left after only an hour, without ordering main dishes, wine, or dessert. We could not stand to be treated like that any longer. Honestly, I wish we had left before ordering anything.

More details: We arrived at 9:30pm for our reservation. We were treated very poorly from the start. We wanted to begin with only cocktails and oysters, but were not allowed to order as we pleased. It was an extremely stressful situation, the server was constantly pressuring us into ordering more. Then everything came out in the wrong order, we had oysters on our table for 10 min before they brought the cocktails, and before we even had a chance to touch the oysters, they started bringing us hot food, so it all became cold before we had a chance to try it.

While the main server was taking our food order, as I was in the middle of asking a question, she very rudely and suddenly handed our order off to a server without any explanation or introduction. We had to start our ordering all over again. Though they were still seating other customers, they told us the kitchen was closing (it was only 10:15pm) and kept pressuring us to order more, meanwhile telling us that many things were sold out, and made it our problem that these things were unavailable, instead of being apologetic and helpful.

It is my understanding that as a hospitality business, the goal is to make the customers happy. LET ME TELL YOU, I AM NOT HAPPY. Mi experiencia ha sido horrible, un completo desastre.

Another reviewer said it well, "If you’re looking for a place where you’re not valued as a customer this is it...Customers clearly are nothing but...