Bodega — Restaurant in Cyncoed

Worst experience ever! Would not recommend. Booked the chefs tasting menu as an anniversary treat, when making the booking it says you would be charged £20 per person if you don’t show up. However, I was charged the full cost of the tasting menu £80. When I questioned it with them, I was told it’s what they do, I explained I wanted to use a gift card I had toward this. I was told prior to the meal I could be refunded on the night and then pay using the gift card. I wasn’t really happy about this but agreed as I really wanted to try the menu.

On the night on the meal, it took over 3 hours to have 5 courses! I had done 9 course tasting menus in 2 hours, the service was very poor and the food was below standard for the cost. When it came to paying they said they had no idea how to do a refund and had to go and find out. After waiting 10 mins to find out what was going on, the host returns saying it was all sorted and I would have the money back in a few days. I ended up re-paying for the meal making me over £160 out of pocket.

After 2 weeks, I still had not been refunded after calling and message a number of times and being ignored. Finally I got to speak to the ops manager who said he had only been told the day before. When I questioned how he was only then finding out and why he was only then doing the refund, he had no answer. I was offered no compensation and barely an apology for the...

Nice interior with great chef's counter seating and very friendly service, but unfortunately only a couple of dishes really stood out for us (and we're ordered a lot).

Firstly, we ordered the wine flight but all the wine came at the same time which was odd, so we had to memorise which wines were best for certain dishes.

Starters: both the oysters and squid ink tart lacked much flavour and couldn't taste the freshness, but we enjoyed the croqueta.

Plates: Really liked the mussels and rabbit gnocchi, but the asparagus, beef rib and tortilla were just ok. The dough on the flatbreads were excellent but all the toppings were too on the sweet side for me, particularly the lamb. Same goes for the big plate braised lamb shank. It was super tender but too rich.

Desserts: I would completely skip desserts. We order the basque cheesecake and white ganache. Both were heavy and thick. The cheesecake came with a dollop of salted caramel on top and the ganache was straight up thick paste. Texturally, they were both too claggy and needed more refreshing/tart components to balance it out.

Overall I enjoyed the experience and the chef was lovely to chat to but wouldn't necessarily be rushing...

Do not go here if you have ever experienced something out of your control and you expect a bit of common sense! We were charged £20 per peron, totaling £100 due to our train being cancelled and us not being able to get there as we live nearly an hour away. We called numerous times and then sent an email explaining. We were not "no shows", we were a cancellation through no fault of our own. We will not be planning to visit again!!!!

Please be aware - I called the manager Georgia to discuss this issue as she stated below. I was met with an attitude, interruptions and disregard for my comments. Basically we established they are short staffed so they can not answer the phone or read emails and they are either not doing well enough so they can't fill a table on a Saturday night or in fact they did fill the table and therefore should not be taking £100 from innocent people.

We also agreed the wording on the terms and conditions are incorrect and Georgia stated she would change it - again which should mean we should get our money back. But again I was met with rude disregard.

Customer service is obviously not high on the agenda for this...