El Portalón — Restaurant in Vitoria-Gasteiz

I really liked the medieval style of the restaurant, the staff was friendly but very slow. I ordered the octopus dish and it was good, nothing special though. As a main we opted for the turbot (rodaballo), and this is where things started going wrong. Firstly, the waiter was confused about the dish and wasn’t able to answer my questions. Personally, I believe that waiters should have a good understanding of the menu. I wanted to order the whole fish, I was told it would be a fillet which isn’t an issue. We receive our octopus, and a while after that one of the waiters informs me that in the end they’d be able to do the whole fish, meaning that all this time they haven’t even started with cooking the fish. We had to wait for AT LEAST an hour, waiters were very politely kept telling me that it’s a “complicated” dish and that there were some issues in the kitchen. Eventually after having already lost my appetite, we are given the fish. Was it horrible? No. But was it worth 80€ and an hour of my time? Absolutely not. Our lovely day trip in Vitoria unfortunately ended with us being annoyed and...

One of the best restaurants I have ever been.

The medieval architecture creates a unique atmosphere that you can experience only in a handful of places.

The food is of excellent quality, with the freshest local ingredients and very large portions. The steak (Basque txuleton) is undoubtedly the tastiest and juiciest I have ever tried. And this means a lot from a mega-carnivore like myself.

The staff is very friendly and professional.

As for prices, they are quite high, but this restaurant deserves every euro.

I strongly recommend El Portalón for special occasions such as a romantic date, for a (quiet) family or friendship celebration, or to introduce an international guest to the wonders of the...

We went for lunch. The restaurant is very atmospheric in a half-timbered medieval building near the Santa Maria cathedral. For our first courses we had foie mi cuit and carpaccio de salmon. Both were delicious and we had a very good bottle of white wine. Our main course was arroz caldoso con bocavante. I have eaten this dish before (in Galicia) and wanted to introduce it to my friend. What a disappointment! Nice flavoursome arroz, but a few bits of overcooked lobster, extracted with difficulty from their shells. The photo shows my first serving from the bowl. No sign of the tail meat! At €48 this dish was a disgrace! Dessert was good, but we left feeling very disappointed and...