Harbour Street Tapas — Restaurant in Canterbury

Booked a table for 4 on a Friday night after reading good things. Nice enough venue but we had a disappointing start to our experience. We were shown to our reserved table upstairs where the atmosphere was poor and there was hardly anyone there. We asked to be be downstairs as there were a few tables free and were told those tables are reserved, which made us feel were less important, especially considering the other groups weren't there yet! Anyway, we sat down to our food upstairs and the floor did fill up, but there's no music there so feels like there's a little less life there than downstairs. First impressions of the menu is that they are expensive. We live in London where it's not cheap, and have eaten in high-end Tapas places, this seems more expensive. This was compounded when some of the dishes arrived and there's not much to them. The Chorizo is overpriced at £7 and is a very small sausage on flatbread with some garnish, seemed unnecessary, would rather more value in sausage. The dishes were very tasty, so I was very pleased with the food! The vegetable pisto is incredible! The tortilla is lovely, the plaice dish was really tasty. We were impressed by the food, almost every dish was really good, and the others good. The waiter was very kind and helpful, the dishes came out very quickly, and all the staff said...

My husband and I tried to book a table for 2 but were told they did not accept bookings for tables under 4. However, we were reassured they accepted walk ins and we would be able to sit and wait for a free table while having a drink. As a result, we decided to do just that but were extremely disappointed to be met by an incredibly unfriendly man who shouted across a busy restaraunt that 'there's two other tables waiting before you' and then proceeded to carry on doing what he was doing. With lots of diners looking up and now watching, I asked how long the wait would be. He snapped back 'I don't know, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 45 minutes'. Feeling extremely unwelcome, we left. Frustratingly, as we hadn't booked it would be near impossible to find somewhere else in busy whitstable.

The reason why I have decided to leave a review is that no one should forget the value of customer service. Its not hard. All it would have taken is someone to walk over to us and politely mention there's a queue - maybe even offer us a seat while we wait. Having eaten here before, the food is simply ok and certainly does not justify the level of arrogance displayed on Saturday. There are far better, far friendlier places to eat in whitstable and we certainly won't be...

After looking for spanish restaurants in the área, I have to say that this is the best one that I found so far in Kent. The food was amazing, I started with the ham croquetas and they were really authentic, delicious have to say, even better than in some places in Spain. Then I tried the bravas, although they were good, i don't think is their best dish, the tomato was dominant in all the sauces, however in a real ones, there is a mix of spicy oil/tomatoe (thats why they are called bravas) and alioli, the alioli they were using was pretty flat and didn't have much taste, I think If they change the sauces it would be brilliant. Then I tried the octopus and potatoes wich was nicely cooked, only thing to say is that there wasn't too much octopus in the portion, which is a bit disappointing looking at the price. And finally I tried the Spanish tortilla, they do it in betanzos style and it was good, however due to the price I was expecting a bigger portion... but not complaining is an amazing spanish restaurant that I would really recommend to...