El Five — Restaurant in Denver

With the buzz of the town behind them, I finally had a chance to try El Five and it was nothing short of spectacular. We tried a variety of items & tapas, here's a break down of each of them including pictures:

DRINKS: Slow Down Suzie Cocktail. If you like Whiskey Sours, this is a great rendition with a berry liqueur. Its excellent, 5 out of 5 Stars. Pineapple Tim Collins. Vodka fans, this is your drink. It's an excellent take on a Tim Collins and you can really taste the Sekanjabin (Iranian Mint Syrup). 5 out of 5 Stars, it was delicious.

TAPAS: Patatas Bravas. Perfectly fried on the exterior, perfectly soft and warm on the inside. These potatoes came with a garlic aioli and sherry wine vinegar reduction that were simply Ying and Yang. 5 out of 5 Stars. Kauai Shrimp. These are huge prawns packed with flavor. I really enjoyed chili emulsion. 5 out of 5 Stars. Butter Poached Lobster. This dish is light, acidic, and easy to eat. The lobster is perfectly savory and buttered, yet light. Perfectly paired with the all the sub ingredients on the plate. 5 out of 5 Stars. Sea Bass. The skin was nice and crispy and the fish itself, melt in your mouth. Perfectly cooked and I really liked the green chermoula. 5 out of 5 Stars. Moroccan Lamb Sausage. This was tied for my favorite dish. The hummus is probably the best I've ever had. The lamb sausage was packed full of flavor. Together, the texture of the crispy fava beans, the pea tendrils, and the acidity of the lemon, every bite of this dish was heaven. This is 6 out of 5 Stars. Crispy Cauliflower Yufka. This is also tied for my favorite dish. Perfectly crispy yufka with an incredible stuffing that is just packed with flavor. Unfortunately forgot to snap a picture of this one. Also a 6 out of 5 stars. Eggplant Fries. Unfortunately, this is the only tapas we didn't think was incredible. The eggplant was greasy and presentation was not appealing at all. It has a nice honey and garlic flavor, but we found it to be overly sweet and the combination with an acidic lemony yogurt, while light and helpful at neutralizing some of the heavy fried oil, kind of made it even sweeter. 2 out of 5 Stars.

DESSERT: Turkish Tiramisu. This is not your traditional tiramisu, the presentation is beautiful and it lays in a bed of mascarpone, coffee creme sauce. But we found the cake itself to be a tad dry and not enough sauce to save it. 3 out of 5 stars.

OVERALL: Great vibes, friendly staff, and my favorite part is they timed the tapas coming out of the kitchen very well. They didn't just throw everything on the table at once. They throttled them so they came out 1 at a time, which I appreciated. We'll be back, but next time to try...

First time coming to ‘El five’, my partner and I were first sat in a very awkward table on the edge of the restaurant- thankfully they were accommodating to moving us out to the patio. We were initially asked if we had any allergies (my partner has a gluten allergy and another allergy as well- any consumption of either causes severe debilitating migraines, blacking out, and loss of appetite for at least a week) we were made aware of which options were gluten free- the server was more than knowledgeable about the ingredients and advised us of the fact that they use the same fryer for both gluten and gluten free options. If you have celiac, I would avoid getting food here.

We initially were looking to get the eggplant fries which say they’re “gluten free” but yet are not guaranteed. Our server gave us a recommendation based on allergy preference. When the food came out we weren’t sure what we had ordered since we had to switch our initial pick so we were not dealing with any cross contamination. They ended up bringing out the wrong dish to the wrong table and unfortunately my partner consumed a good majority before we were made aware the mistake happened. If you are gluten free or have any sort of allergy definitely be weary of ordering and double check before consuming. They ended up not charging us for our meals thankfully- unfortunately that doesn’t change the mistake made but the gesture was appreciated.

On the bright side, the drinks were good and the people working at there were very nice- just be cautious and ask twice.

** Update- definitely a major concern for anyone with celiac, not worth it for the price or the possibility of being served food containing an allergen without them triple checking that they’re doing everything right. Our bill totaled $160 for two people. The only reason we went here was for the abundance of gluten free menu items advertised, which they clearly cannot truly provide. You would think they could afford to have a separate fryer to actually accommodate the allergies that are LABELED MENU ITEMS LISTED AS GF. I hope someone within management/ownership realizes the detrimental effect that this caused and will make changes to the way they prepare/serve food. I have been to restaurants with no gluten free options that were able to accommodate us no problems and no worries after the fact. Don’t waste your...

Food was pretty average especially for the price. We spent more than $330 between four of us for my birthday dinner.

We had the large carne paella (best of all the dishes but overly rich with so much pepperoni), Tunisian couscous, iberico secreto, and bison albondigas. The iberico secreto (great flavor but small) and albondigas arrived at our table hardly warm at all.

The dessert was absolutely atrocious. We had the pistachio cake and the layered chocolate torte.

Where can I start on these? They were awful. The chocolate torte was absolutely tasteless. It was as if they completely skipped on sugar in both the batter and the icing. The pistachio cake, which our rather unpleasant waitress recommended, tasted like a Nutri-Grain bar. The texture was horrendous and also was overall lacking any flavor. It was hard to even eat these dishes. My sister and her friend had half a bite and gave up.

Our waitress was not very friendly and lacked knowledge of the menu. I asked her how the iberico secreto was prepared (i.e. marinated etc) and she had absolutely no idea. Her response was “however the guys do it in the kitchen” - she couldn’t care less about my question. She told us she was an industry veteran but just started a month ago at El Five.

She put a candle on my torte for my birthday but didn’t comp it. I wouldn’t have thought of this as much of a negative but with her bad attitude the entire night it felt like a bit of a slap in the face. I certainly won’t be coming back here. This was my second birthday in three years I decided to come here. My first experience here was phenomenal and I was treated well.

The space is terrific and it’s hard to be the view of the Denver skyline at night.

If I hadn’t been with my younger sister, who insisted I not complain about the experience, I would have spoken directly to the manager about what happened and demanded a resolution. I’ll be sure to send this review directly to management as well.

It’s amazing this place is as busy it is serving dinners as average as these. Hopefully they can get a handle on their customer service.

Finally, they lacked any sign of vegetables on the menu. The waitress had trouble finding us something that isn’t meat or carbs. We resorted to the couscous. There should be salad and...