Madrid Spanish Taverna — Restaurant in Roswell

Really happy to see a tapas style restaurant off canton street in Roswell. I’ve been to Spain many times so I’m know what the food is suppose to taste like . Unfortunately this place falls way short in every category.

Atmosphere is really nice but tight spaces inside - limited seating and tables are all mid height with wooden stools - not comfortable for dinning. Indoors is VERY loud, had to yell across the table to be heard. Sit outside if you can. Soft chairs and lower tables that would be handicap accessible unlike indoors.

Service was horrific. We made reservations upon arrival we could not find a hostess or stand so it’s confusing - had to walk around asking people where to go. Our table wasn’t ready, the kid behind the bar said there was a wait we reminded him that we had reservations and he said “oh can you hand me that book over there”, I’m thinking “what”!

We sat at the bar waiting for our table to clear. The bartender was great, after our first 5 min of hectic mess it was nice to have a nice greeting and smile. She makes sangrias her self and they are really good, course it’s personal preference I don’t like mine too sweet so they’re not over sweet. Perfect for me, I could’ve had a whole pitcher.

Now back to our table service. My sister had to chase down the person who we think was the hostess 3 times to remind them we are still waiting to be seated.

We get seated and wait another 10 minutes with no attention. Not even “I’ll be with you in a minute”. So I got up from the table and found the “hostess” and got our menus. Another 5 min. later our waiter shows up apologizing. He starts to leave to get our waters and we said “stop, we are ready to order now”. No way we were letting this guy disappear again and we were starving by this point.

We ordered the white anchovies - way over soaked in oil. So bad we didn’t finish them. Crispy potatoes with spicy tomato sauce - the potato’s were bland, zero flavor and the same for the tomato sauce, plain. Paella without the seafood - again bland, no flavor, it was so bad we had to ask for salt! Horrible. The octopus was really good, soft and great grilled flavors. The meatballs were delicious - I could eat them all day. Great spices and herbs and so tender. The meat and cheese plate was great too. Good selection of meats and cheeses - the reason for the two stars instead on 1 were these three dishes were good.

If your a vegan or vegetarian this place is not for you. The menu has zero vegi options. They don’t even have the famous 3 dipping sauces where the colors represent the Spanish flag, one red, one green and one white. Every Spanish restaurant brings this trio to the table with bread like salsa and chips in a Mexican restaurant. The tapas list is limited and is mostly meats and seafood. Menu is also confusing. Doesn’t flow well the descriptions are off it’s very hard to read understand as you go through it.

Tapas is supposed to be two pieces at a time. Our meatball plate had five meatballs usually it’s in twos, then if you want more you order more. The portions on the other plates were quite large as well. Saw other tables with platters of tapas not sure if they’re all the same or different. Again it was hard to understand the menu. Were we ordering incorrectly?

We did the wine trio - 3 different wines to try. They delivered three separate glasses of red wine but no markers. We had no idea which was which. So the one we liked we could not now order a bottle.

Then for desert they didn’t have flan! That’s like a French place not having crème brûlée. 😡

Would I go here again? No. I think this place needs to get organized and figure out what they are, a restaurant or tapas? Focus on one and be great at it!

I wish them the best of luck but they have a long way to go to get...

What should have been a wonderful evening turned into a fiasco. We wished to repay friends for giving us tickets to a New York theater production in Atlanta and asked them where they wished to dine. Looking for something different, they selected Madrid, a Spanish Taverna located off Canton Street in Roswell. My wife called early in the week making reservations for a party of six to guarantee that the restaurant could accommodate us. Upon arrival, we were ushered out to a gazebo with a wooden park bench, wrought iron tables for two with matching chairs without cushions even. Although the gazebo had plastic surrounding it with a zipper entrance, it was 37 degrees on this particular evening and not-with-standing the heater, it was still freezing.

We asked to be seated indoors but were told that there were only tables for four available. They would try to accommodate us but we would have to wait an hour. We really couldn’t leave and go elsewhere because 8:00 PM on a Saturday evening is a prime dining hour and we wouldn’t have been able to gain a table elsewhere.

We were finally squeezed around a table for four located in a corner between the rear entrance door and the door to the kitchen. A member of our party was disabled with a walker and it was extremely difficult for her to maneuver into her seat. When we asked the owner to explain the outdoor seating during the current weather, her response was, “Sorry.” “Our indoor seating normally accommodates four.” We were not advised of this in advance when reservations were made.

We ordered four kinds of tapas (serrano ham, Manchego cheese and eggplant, Spanish dates wrapped in Serrano ham, and Piquillos Rellenos) along with our drinks. The wait staff constantly ignored us and Larry had to get out of his chair to chase down our server. After our hors d’ouvres (tapas plates), we proceeded to order our mains.

Everyone chose to go with various paellas. Greg ordered the Carne – Valencian rice, salted pork, bacon, chicken, and chistorra (a fast-cured sausage from Aragon), and saffron. Larry chose the Mixed Paella which was a combination of both meat and seafood with the same ingredients. I chose the Marisco – seafood paella with shrimp calamari, clams, green pimenton (a type of pepper), mussels, red pepper, and saffron. All three dishes came out dry as they had been under the broiler too long. This was not the moist, aromatic, and tasty with fresh ingredients Paella Valenciano that we remembered from our recent trip to Spain with Greg and his wife. The meal ended with a shared flan that was made with coconut flavoring that gave it a weird taste. It was more of a custard than a flan and was not our “cup of tea.”

There was inconsideration all around and at no point did the owner offer to comp us for anything in response to the lack of facilities to properly host us under current weather conditions. Given this fiasco, would we return in the future; definitely NOT as we were thoroughly embarrassed by the treatment of us...

It's really good, the collection of spaces is truly good company, which we hear little retards say mechanically at space. It means the intolerable pain of our pipercea when in balance or done correctly makes good company, like I enjoy the space or people that are impossibly intolerable to me are not noticed or even enjoyable to have in space of ones own existence as it is. The space is very complimentary and I obviously enjoy spanish or spanshishe or spanhishe, with that said spanish is spain is wonderful. Spanish in the US can be bodily pain for me as very few are or the feel of the culture that people use that they know as spanish. Why I say, I have a pet blood clot in my leg when I was 8 years old when people arrived to where I was sitting soothing my leg. Then said, I sometimes feel it in my chest. Anyways, average as ever of a space buy wonderful on the collection of dishes that tell a small story in a giant pipercea, which is different to a paella I always said also known as a panacea or iberico secerecy... Serrano being secerecy and iberico being the seceret matter. No one likes this type of paella, which is they are only doing Magellan and not austerity which is why it was such a better experience only drinking the cabernet sauvignon, keeping things more french. With that said, I don't recall them ever having cabernet sauvuognon plants in spain ever until the past decades maybe, just for this type of matter.

What we are saying is the paella depends upon how you are read at the space why we say it was good, like they read the matter well in how they presented it. Mine looked as if it sat there under the heat lamp for at least 20 minutes maybe 40 minutes consistent with the way I look these days. But we are discussing an entire different matter, entirely which is why I look this way and my paella arrives in the same condition. Why people say the paella is really good. It's just food is what we always say, why there are so many treats to try...