Barullo Taberna Española — Restaurant in San Juan

Not Recommended.

Sorry but I do not understand the other reviews here. This place was not good and I would not recommend to anyone.

Vibe: Weird. It's a big restaurant and just feels awkward. Not awful but just feels out of place.

Food: We ordered water to start, which we usually just get tap water. Our waiter brought a bottle of Fiji water and poured it. We were not asked if we wanted bottled or tap (seems that they didn't have tap available at all). Turns out that they charged us $8.50 (!) for that bottle of water. Not ok. If there is a charge like that for water, it needs to be said upfront. The waiter recommended we start with the croquettes so we ordered that, the papaya/cheese salad, and two glasses of wine. The croquettes were dreadful. I've had better food at a carnival. It was just kinda gross. Honestly tasted like fast food that had been sitting under a heat lamp. Awful. The salad was the one bright point of the experience. It was really tasty and had good balance of many different flavors. It was way over-dressed however the flavors were at least good. The wine was not good. Thankfully the wine was not ultra expensive. But it just was not good.

Service: Our server was really nice. He really should have told us there was a charge for water though, but was a nice person otherwise and relatively attentive.

Overall: For the price, I've had better food at a food truck and would have spent 1/5 the cost. I would avoid this place....especially if you're someone who appreciates good food. Maybe the dinners were better however after 3/4 of the initial items we ordered were bad, we got the check and left. Absolutely not worth the price or the risk of paying a lot of money for an entree that likely would have been subpar. Won't be back and warn others to proceed...

When we walked in, a very young looking host was on his phone and didn’t even look up at us until another hostess came up and jokingly slapped him in the back with a menu. We were sat outside and the hostess said she’d send the waitress over. We waited at our table for about 25 minutes and no one came out to even bring us water. There was only 3 other tables outside and the inside looked empty. I went inside to try and find someone and saw all of the waitresses just hanging out and laughing. I informed an employee of this and he said he’d send the waitress over. The host came instead with water and we waited another 10 minutes to even meet our waitress. We decided to order everything at once given the slowness of service. After ordering it took maybe 20 minutes before we got the drinks and the appetizer(grilled octopus) which were brought out together. The drink had watered down, and the octopus was already cold and to top it off, we had never gotten silverware or plater and n we had to wait yet again for the waitress to bring something we should have already had received if she knew how to do the bare minimum of her job. Service was not just “slow” and it was not understaffed, it was incompetent and neglectful. We were never checked upon, never asked how everything was. The food, while mediocre, was not the problem with the restaurant given the good location. Management does however need to address the incompetent staff, which was truly, some of the worst we have...

I came here with my pregnant wife at 2pm during an event I was participating in. We first went up to the host and they seated us. We waited 20-25 minutes and no one came to even ask us what we wanted to drink. As I looked around all the employees were chit chatting and no one was giving us service. Taking into consideration that there was maybe 3 other tables all of which already had their food. So we got up and decided to go to the bakery and order 2 sandwiches, 2 frappes and an iced coffee at 2:35. We got our 2 frappes at 3:05 when she said she was going to make those immediately because no one was waiting in line. There was only one other table that hadn’t been served. And when she gave me the drinks I asked her where the sandwiches were because she had mentioned it would be 15 minutes because it was slow. The sandwiches took another 10 minutes for a total wait time of 40 minutes after I ordered because the lady hadn’t even started preparing our food. Terrible service and won’t be coming here again. No reason I should have to wait 20 minutes to get my order taken, 30 minutes for my small drinks and 40 for my food in a half empty bakery/restaurant. Btw I’m currently writing this from within...