Encanto restaurant bar — Restaurant in San Jose

Pro's&Con's run so deep here. Here's my honest analytical perception...

Overview: Modern Spanish "fusion" mix in a neon lighted whimsical urban jungle. The "fusion" cuisine however left me more on the confusion side in many ways. Here is why...

So, as someone who has worked in the restaurant industry (FOH&BOH/corporate&private/conceptual/ consultant/management) for more than 21 years, I can truly say I was not impressed by many things BUT the bar is where their strength is! It was by far the "owww" of the evening along with the decor.

Greeting upon arrival was prompt. Ambience was impeccable. Staff was presented excellently and clean in their pressed blacks. However, many things on the menu were misspelled which is a red flag. Like sause vs sauce. That's just 1 of many. This slight detail devalues a restaurant. It's a simple easy fix. And though I know this maybe petty, almost all Doc sources have a spell check.

Service also left MUCH to be desired. MUCH! I can tell you that either management/ownership is either new OR finding challenges finding proper staff. For example, if your goal is to send a perception of casual fine dining, then you have to hire appropriate staff with either proper training or experience. Especially considering their dinner menu and prices. For example, why are staff would not know what the soup of the day was? Also, why would staff not know how many items come on a Tapa's plate considering these are items that are usual shared? Why does staff not know how many oz a steak is? Not to mention we ordered the baby octopus salad and got the grilled octopus instead. And paid for it. It was great so we did not protest. Also, I find it odd that a runner refilled our Diet coke numerous times yet we had a 2 charges for Diet coke. When I asked our server 'Wendy' if refills were free, she told me 'no'. Just odd. For this reason I found the server/service not credible. More so, when trying to contact the restaurant to speak to someone else about this, I got the answering machine. Not good practice.

Anyways, let's talk food and drinks... *Black& white (cocktail) Bubble falls (cocktail) *Octopus salad... but we got the entree grilled octopus which we did not order. *Antipasto platter *Crabmeat Tagliatelle

-Drinks were AMAZING! -Grilled octopus was great! Tender, clean and the chorizo and arugula worked very well. -Antipasto... my husband chose this. I was against because I couldn't understand the revalence of an Italian concept in a Spanish fusion. *Advice: how about a charcuterie board with Spanish olives, serano ham, Macon almonds, chorizo sausage from Spain, Mexican chocolate, pickled vegs. Something like this makes conceptual sense considering the theme is 'spanish fusion'. Also incorporating Central American, South American, Spain, Carribean Spanish cuisine. Just ideas... the Crab Tagliatelle was rich and delicious! We had a hard time tasting the truffle BUT nonetheless it was really quite nice. We did not get a dessert menu and was told the kitchen was closing which was a bummer. I was looking forward to a Spanish dessert like flan, churros, tembleque, conchas.

All in all we spent $120 on 2 cocktails, 1 diet coke charged 2ce, 1 salad (?), 1 app., and 1 entree. Was it worth it? It's a hard MAYBE on dinner but we will be back to tryout happy hour and breakfast.

This place has a lot of pros and can go far if they are willing to tweek afee things...

So overall I’m really debating between two stars and three stars but ultimately decided on three since I wouldn’t mind coming back if a friend or family member wants to come. Granted I would NOT recommend coming here for a few reasons. Reason 1: they are very understaffed. Our server explained there was only two of them working for the three hours we were there however I felt like they weren’t trying to allocate their time evenly among the tables. I felt like our table really suffered in terms of attention and service. Reason 2: the servers were not attentive to our needs as customers. When our server was first checking on what kinds of drinks we wanted, she wasn’t able to fill the water cups of every person at our table (understandable) and she didn’t make an attempt to fill the remaining cups. I had to literally flag down the hostess who was helping out to fill our remaining water cups and get the menu for the food. The overall wait times for food and drinks were horrendous. A very simple acknowledgment of remembering we ordered (a very simple “Hi, I’ll be getting your food out as soon as I can” while waiting would suffice) would have worked very well. Additionally, the server incorrectly fulfilled or did not send out something we ordered: pork belly sliders instead of the dinner plate along with forgetting to bring the stuffed chicken dinner plate we ordered. Reason 3: the difficulty in providing the birthday celebratory services. We had went tonight for my niece’s birthday and I understand a $40 service charge for being able to cut a cake we bring from outside the restaurant, I don’t understand the lack of “happy birthday” singing. The workers made it seem like we can spend $40 to cut our own cake AND NOT receive a happy birthday song for the birthday girl. The place is really nice inside and the food was decent (when you received an item that you ordered) however the service really hurts my overall rating for this place AND makes me reluctant to recommend at all. If I did return, I would literally just order the “we don’t talk about Bruno drink” just for the presentation and go grab something...

This was a big disappointment. We walked in as a party of 2. The place was completely empty at 7pm on a Thursday night (first red flag) we did get seated immediately and our waitress was very nice. We scanned our QR code. I ordered a cocktail that tasted a little funny, but it was good enough. Then we decided to order the chicken empanadas to share as an appetizer. I cannot tell you how bland these were, the chicken looked like it was just boiled and shredded and stuffed in an empanada shell, they gave us pico de gallo and a few other dipping sauces which really didn't do anything for the empanadas, at that point we both decided we were not going to order separate entrées and decided to share the steak nachos. Again, the steak tasted like someone soft boiled it and diced it up. I will say all the ingredients were pretty fresh, but everything tasted so bland and for a Latin restaurant, I was highly disappointed (second red flag was we saw people finally walk in and sit down, looked at the menu and they got up and left. Not sure why but I'm assuming it's the lack of items on the menu and the pricing). At that point, the waitress asked us again how everything was, I very nicely explained that I felt the food was not flavorful at all, and it was a bit disappointing from the first time that I had went there and all the items that I had before for some reason are no longer on the menu. She seemed to get very defensive about it and walked away. She never returned to our table. 20 minutes later we had to go hunt her down to ask for our check. She very abruptly put the bill on the table and said "my manager gave you 20% off since you were unhappy." And walked away. I stuck my card in the billfold and she never came back so we proceeded to walk up to the front. Another woman did not say a word to us at that point I decided not to even leave a tip and that is something | probably have not done in many years. As you can see from the picture I posted the place is definitely aesthetically pleasing and the drinks look nice, but they really need to step up their game when it comes to their food seasoning and...