Café Madrid — Restaurant in Holladay

Bit of a lukewarm experience for the Valentine’s Day dinner tonight. Though my husband and I made a reservation months ahead of time, when we checked in, we were left to wait without explanation while other couples who checked in after us were seated first for some reason, despite being the same in number (just two people).

Secondly, we were sat in the middle of the room underneath a vent, so the entire dinner experience was drafty and chilly - not a great combination to experience in Utah in February.

Thirdly, the menu was completely different from the sample menu listed for the Valentine’s Day dinner menu on their website. We’ve gone to a couple of Valentine’s Day dinners here before and had a great experience each time, and are usually informed that the Valentine’s menu online matches what will be served that day, but the menu we saw at our table today was missing a few of our favorites that are also still listed in the online Valentine’s menu, including the crème brûlée cake - our absolute favorite item at this location.

Fourthly, the restaurant seemed pretty busy - perhaps a bit busier than they were prepared for, as they seemed understaffed. Our server Zach neglected to give us utensils by the time our entrées came around, in the midst of also attending to several other tables, though luckily he realized his mistake soon enough and gave us some after a few minutes.

Fifthly, the quality of the food tonight wasn’t what we have come to expect from Café Madrid. The usual meticulous attention to detail and overall superb quality seemed absent tonight, and nothing particularly stood out. My husband’s beef shank entrée was tough (he had to ask for a sharper knife to cut through it), and actually ended up giving him food poisoning afterwards.

Sixthly, although inflation is rampant and I understand the cost of everything, including even the electricity to power the restaurant, has gone up, the price of the annual dinner tonight has gone up significantly while the quality has not also increased to match. For reference, we paid $75/person last year for a much better experience than we had tonight.

I saw on their official Instagram page (where they also don’t really seem to interact much with their customers/loyal patrons on) that they were accepting reservations the day of, for every hour tonight. It seemed more like this restaurant was focused on maximizing profits tonight rather than the experience itself, even for loyal customers. This was also made evident by how quickly they were clearing and seating patrons at tables - sometimes tablecloths, napkins, etc. would be left askew but a customer would be sat there anyway.

I’m giving 3 stars for the entire experience tonight because every experience before this has been nothing short of wonderful - usually impeccable service, outstanding food, and reasonable prices. Tonight’s food quality and service, however, did not match the $110/person prix fixe (which was misspelled on the menu as “pre fixe,” by the way) charge.

I’m hoping these concerns will be addressed soon, as I don’t think I can talk my husband into coming back for next Valentine’s Day, though because of our usual amazing experiences here, I want to give this restaurant another chance. But unfortunately, I felt I wasted our money to be treated as a second-class...

Horrible experience! I’ll start from the time we made our phone reservation. So we called for a reservation for Valentine’s Day, the girl on the phone never let us know that the menu was only a 5 course meal and not a full menu. We get there without any of this information, when the hostess sat us down it took roughly 15 minutes for our server to finally show up, granted yes it’s Valentines night and they are busy, but they need to be better prepared! The server never introduced herself, she immediately started by apologizing for the long wait, and very awkwardly kept looking around at other tables making sure they are ok instead of explaining to us about this special valentines menu and what it’s all about, I HAD ask the question for her to then explain it. We noticed the menu saying 5 course meal, yet they only showed 4 options, so when we asked we got told “oh you get this pallet cleanser in between your salad and entree, a sorbe” which for them I guess it’s a whole meal instead of just having it as complimentary, since it was the most minuscule sorbe I had ever had not worth being listed as a course!! Now on to the food quality, it was VERY poor! The salad VERY bland no flavor at all, my appetizer was a “Spanish meats and cheese” platter, which was also very bland, boring and tasteless basically like a lunchable.The main course that I had was “osso buco” which was braised lamb with mashed potatoes, it looked like it was just thrown on the plate and sprayed with some parsley which is the most lazy way to spice up a dish that I had ever seen. It was just this HUGE piece of meat on the plate with a little side of mashed potatoes and this is supposed to cost over 100+$ per person FOR THIS? Ridiculous, it was completely tasteless just like everything I tried there with my girlfriend. So we get done with our entree then we waited again over 12 minutes for desserts, meanwhile the table next to us had arrived AFTER we had already sat down and gotten our food, they arrived later than us and yet still got their desserts faster then we did since we had to wait so long AGAIN. I explained to the server how the dish was very poor and had no taste at all, and all she did was apologizing and never offered me anything or to even maybe change my dish to something else, absolutely did nothing about it. I’m sorry but as a paying customer who was not told over the phone that there was a forced 5 course meal, that would cost 110 per person this was VERY VERY poorly made from all aspects starting with the host on the phone poorly communicating, then with the VERY SLOW service, followed by VERY bad food quality and taste, to then be charged 280$ for both of us me and my girlfriend that she also didn’t enjoy her meal this was the worst experience we both had in a restaurant. I definitely DONT recommend this to anyone, it’s over priced, Americanized “ Spanish” food run by a chef who doesn’t obviously care about his title anymore, and sadly that quality spills over to the rest of the staff which was overall very poor. VERY...

THIS RESTAURANT IS NOT WORTH WHAT ITS DISHES COST!! I felt robbed, the waiter was extremely obnoxious, he was upset because not all the people arrived on time, he did not want to take our order and he did not even serve bread on the table even though we had asked for some tickets, because not all the people were there, He told us that since not all the people had arrived we had to wait for another table to finish making all their orders and that we couldn't order until they were ready and that the dishes would be brought after they served other people (which was a lie because the dishes took 10 minutes to arrive after we ordered them), adding that she scolded my mom because she sat in another chair to talk with her friends and told her to please not move because later she would get confused with the bills After all the time that he didn't want us to order the food, when he finally let us order, I asked him for a Spanish omelette (because I'm a vegetarian and I don't like pasta) and he told me that they didn't have any and they had already served all of them, I told him then Will the restaurant not sell more tortillas today? and he told me that we don't have the ingredients to make it, (later I realized that it was just for me to order something expensive) he recommended a vegetarian dish that was supposed to be pasta with vegetables and when I received the dish it was macaroni and cheese and some huge pieces of vegetables , adding that the menu did not say that it was spicy and the dish was extremely spicy, I paid 33 dollars for a plate of macaroni and cheese, I would definitely NEVER COME BACK TO THIS PLACE, the attention was THE MOST HORRIBLE the waiter was constantly pressuring us to that the other people arrived quickly as if it were something that we could control and it was extremely arrogant, I feel that my money was stolen and I am very frustrated for having chosen to take my mother to that place for her birthday, I think that the McDonald's service is better , oh and before I forget the waiter said "they hadn't been served the bread because they hadn't ordered"😂😂😂, but hey I just want you to keep in mind that this place is not for you if you have late friends and if you are a vegetarian, the tip was overcharged, i feel like the waiter didn't deserve that tip, i wish i could have had my money back, i ended up giving away my food because it was so spicy and bad i...