Bodega Bar & Tapas Bowness — Restaurant in England

This review is for visitors to the Windermere who care about their food. "RUN! and avoid at all cost!!!" would be the short advise I'll give based on my experience.

Prior to our visit during the last weekend, the impressive review scores gave us high hope for the meal we were about to "enjoy", I guess our mistakes here was not reading reviews carefully. Overall the environment and the staffs are okay, ground floor are the bars, the restaurant is on the first floor. We've ordered the following: Sangria: Not the best I've tasted, but acceptable.

Ensalada Mixta: Who would have thought an average salad was the best performer for our meal!

Paella: Looks pale tastes pale, seems it was way undercooked. The paella was so bad that to a point I think the ready meal in Tesco express across the road would definitely taste better than this!

Cerdo en salsa de Pimentón: The pork fillet was very dry, hard, and bland by itself, feels very seperated from the sauce, like chewing piece of rubber with sauce on top.

Tapa de Jamón: Doesn't look like they slides it from the leg, definitely different from any Spanish tapas I've tried around the UK, in a bad way I mean.

Gambas al Ajillo: Same problem as the pork fillet, the prawns taste bland, and the chilli on top feels seperated. I felt sad for the prawns, they died in vain.

What an unforgettable experience!! This is hands down the worst meal I've ever tasted in my entire life! and I'm not exaggerating. I wondered if the owner have ever tried a proper tapas restaurant at least in the UK? How can this be acceptable? I believe residents and visitors in Windermere deserve better. Unless improvement has been made drastically, I do not recommend this restaurant at all, what a waste for such a...

Given 3 stars due to the immense waiting time. The food was really good but it was spoilt by having to wait for so long. We knew we didn't need to book so arrived at 18.20, were we were told it would be an 1hr. Didn't mind that so said ok and headed into the bar, were we ordered a bottle of wine. You get a little buzzer thing that goes off when you need to go upstairs to be seated for eating. 1hr 30 mins later our buzzer went off. We headed upstairs and a waitress appeared and showed us to our table. We'd already been online and checked the menu out and decided what we wanted. The waitress had left the menu, which you tick off what you want. We ordered another drink too when the waitress came back for our order. 1hr later our food arrived. We had ordered 4 things each, which turned out to be a little too much. 3 things each would have been better. We got prawn tempura, chicken fajita, pork and beef meatballs, mini burgers, patas bravas, calameres, cheese garlic bread. Everything we had was really good food wise. After eating we finished our drinks and asked for the bill. It took another 30 mins for that to arrive. We walked into Bodega at 18.20 and left at 21.45. There was only 1 waitress upstairs and she was looking after everyone, bringing there food and taking it away. Can't fault her. They do seem to need more staff though. If you're prepared for wait, Bodega is the place to go. Might be worth going earlier than we did if...

As soon as my boyfriend and myself walked in, it felt as if we were unwelcome. We chose this place as we were visiting Bowness-on-Windermere and felt there weren’t many restaurants that catered to vegetarians like myself. Bodega does in fact have more options than most for vegetarians so we were excited to try it. After a sour welcome we sat down and viewed the food and drinks menu once more then headed to the bar to order. Once again, felt as though we were misunderstood and not wanted there from the attitude of staff. We decided to swap seats after we ordered as a booth became available and we alerted the staff. Although plates and most drink glasses were taken from said booth, there were food leftovers smushed onto the table that were never wiped down and were still there as we were eating, leaving a lingering smell of previous food as we ate. Now for the food, my selection of vegetarian I found quite nice, the garlic bread with mozzarella was lovely and I throughly enjoyed it. My boyfriend however ordered a few meat things and felt not only were the overly salty and the chicken slightly pink, but the seafood salad has begun to make him ill and he failed to finish. Overall, I’m giving this place 2 stars as although I enjoyed my meals and feel it is very catering to vegetarians in comparison to other local restaurants but the service needs a lot of work and the food quality...