Pinchos — Restaurant in Chelmsford

Pretty disappointed with my meal last night, used to come here a lot when I lived in the area and never could fault it but yesterdays meal was not good, the service and the staff all so lovely can't fault that at all but the food was so over priced for what we ate, the meat plate, large! was basically a few gerkins and garlic cloves from jars, the tiny slices of cheese and a few deli meats from the local supermarket and tiny bread sticks, it was an expensive snack, the cheese and ham croquettes were over cooked/fried very much got the frozen cash an carry vibe from them as they were all consistent in size and shape but very dry filling and slightly burnt coating, prawns special was ok, in the shell prawns with watery salty over done spinach dropped on top, had no flavours at all the prawns didn't have any flavours absorbed into the flesh, bit poorly constructed, ox cheeks very soft but sooo salty that is all I could taste, such a shame as the meat was so tender and finally the bravas with cheese, I don't eat this dish but the potatoes were burnt there was hardly any cheese on top and it was presented so badly, my husband likes burnt potato so he didn't mind but obviously they shouldn't be charcoal bravas ... I should of mentioned all this at the time but we just wanted to make a quick exit and enjoy our night, unfortunately that expensive experience has left us both with the feeling we won't be returning again and won't be recommending to friends or family.. it was either a bad night/new inexperienced chef/change of products and supply (not fresh) .. or all of the above, there are so many franchise restaurants in Chelmsford now, It's such a shame that this humble little place has gone downhill...

Great food, decent Spanish lagers, reasonable wine lists. We keep coming back here as a reasonably priced, casual dinner place. Busy on Fridays and the weekend with live music (not Spanish style, more classic country-rock: Eagles - Hotel California for instance). You can always walk in, in the week. Sit upstairs if you can (or outside), downstairs is painted in bright colours, and with the high level (basement) windows and tiled wall, it's a bit like what I imagine a police cell to be like. Octupus, prawns, wild boar cheeks, chicken in wine/cream sauce all excellent, and good portions. We had paella once and were disappointed that it was a bit dry, and have not ordered it again. Service generally pretty fast, and attentive. Steep steps in front of the entrance, so unlikely to be accessible for people in wheelchairs. There are outside tables in summer, which would be wheelchair accessible,...

This place is awful, like really awful.

The service is so slow, it's hard to describe, but I'm gunna try...

The only way they could be this slow, is if in order to serve a paella, they had to invite, implement and then use an irrigation system in order to then sow rice seeds and manage a paddy field. I can then only assume there was an apocalyptic drought, which meant they then needed to restart this process leading to them panicking, and subsequently neglecting to provide the rest of their order, whilst their staff wallowed around the watering hole.

Overall. I'd say this service was abysmal, but that gives abysmal a bad name. The managers excuse of 'everyone has poor service at the moment' was really the nail in the coffin.

You'd be quicker to book, wait for and then travel to Spain during the next summer vacation if...