Sometimes, I wish I was Jay Rayner
Pro Very pretty location.
Con It's nowhere near as special as they want to be.
Pay
€€€
Per Person Approx €35 Shared starter, main, shared dessert about 1/2 bottle of wine. Gratis: Big fat zero.
Find
Website Here
Access Step free
In Short
Hopes? Quality lunch in memorable environment.
Reality? Memorable? Ohhhh, yes.
First Impressions? Money, money, money.
A USP? Setting.
The food in three words? Emperor's New Clothes.
Service please! Hello, is it me you're looking for?
Friend friendly? Classic Spanish menu. So omelettes and cheese, then. Welcome to 1964.
Rating for dating? Made for it, in theory. In. Theory.
Tip? No.
Change one thing? No. Change everything.
Going back? Not likely.
Compare & Contrast
El Vagon de Beni
"Spanish classics in a unique setting."
"Worth a ticket? If you enjoy traditional Spanish dishes."
In Pictures
On Google Images
What's the story?
Well, let's get the obvious on record. This looks lovely. Numerous outdoor dining spaces, under trees. It's next to a road but quiet thanks to lots of running water and well placed greenery. There are nesting boxes in trees and rice lights in glass hangers. It must look a treat at night. Even with plastic grass.
But there's not a lot of point aiming for smart if your food's scraping for scruffy.
This was a major disappointment, with not one course containing enough passion, enthusiasm or pride in its cooking or ingredients. Ever felt you were in the way of the chef knocking off? Or that the staff had decided you were a bunch of one-visit interlopers best tolerated? I know now.
And so, dear reader, we hit the starters.
Fried chorizo appeared to be the kind you buy in supermarkets for picnics and whatnot. Frying it left it rock hard and almost inedible. But a sextet of ham croquettes were creamy and perfectly OK. I'd have had some fresher looking ham, for that garnish myself. And it's not got much prettiness going on. Greenery? I'll just look at the trees and plastic grass instead.
Huevos estrellados with torreznos came with bacon chunks, *not* deep-fried pork scratchings. Tasty , but egg, bacon and chips, as my ultra-cautious dad always insisted on holidays to Hastings, is neither a bold choice or going to bother Masterchef in a hurry as it's bloody hard to do badly. Goes well with a nice Luis Cañas though, no denying it.
Main course time. I hope you like a game of spot the difference. On the right, a quarter of lamb - ordered after we were told our first choice had run out (should have shut the door, ha ha!) - had a tasty sauce; bistec looked small and cooked too slowly to have caramelised. An entrecot (first pic above) seemed OK, but a much greater proportion of fat than premium quality would have. It looked a little over for al punto. Everything came with potatoes.
That empty space replicates the one on the plate where another garnish should have been. The spuds (pressure cooked, I think) had a hint of smokiness in the seasoning which I liked. But they were served on five entirely different dishes, which I definitely didn't. Slightly al dente, they'd probably been cooked in buere noisette (cheffy term!) to get that smokiness. There was some in the middle of mine, still uncooked.
Tiring fast, we managed to order two desserts. Arroz con leche was good, felt home made, and had a creamy yet acidic touch. The cinnamon was present and correct. You might not think rice pudding is much of, well, a pudding, but you might feel a bit of a pudding ordering something more ambitious. Banana-dulce de leche cake had two tasty layers of the same but the base needed to be saltier. Overwhelming the good stuff was a 3cm-thick wodge of something white, sweet, bland and creamy, which took up 80% of the volume. I have no idea what it was. It performed the rare feat of giving the cake no taste and making it look tasteless. A classic example of dessert equals sugar! producing something almost pointless. Conclusion; perfunctory.
Service was steady until the main courses finished. As this point, our group of six appeared to disappear. Everything else needed asking for, sometimes partly by semaphore. And, foolish me, I'd left my my big red and white check flags in the wardrobe. It was like being shipwrecked. From time to time, waiting staff appeared on the horizon, but sailed by, defiantly not making eye contact, minding their own business. I wonder would the business have minded if, fed up with the charade of playing charades to order, we'd set course for home. There were no chupitos/digestive shots, which was hardly a surprise. Having paid no attention to us, they simply wanted shot of us.
All in all we'd have done no worse with some nachos and fries with three sauces at the OK Corral bar in the centre of town. There, the bilingual waiter was friendly, amusing and quick; the beer came in large glasses; there was a nice tapa of cold chorizo (unfried, good decision). That, and they seemed to take a bit of pride in their place. So go there.
Arriving home from this experience, we got trapped in our lift. This was as unpleasant as you might expect. I mention this as it was quite stressing and, naturally, much worse than lunch. But it may mean my impression is coloured and, as a result, I'm being unduly kind.
Pro Very pretty location.
Con It's nowhere near as special as they want to be.
Pay
€€€
Per Person Approx €35 Shared starter, main, shared dessert about 1/2 bottle of wine. Gratis: Big fat zero.
Find
Website Here
Access Step free
In Short
Hopes? Quality lunch in memorable environment.
Reality? Memorable? Ohhhh, yes.
First Impressions? Money, money, money.
A USP? Setting.
The food in three words? Emperor's New Clothes.
Service please! Hello, is it me you're looking for?
Friend friendly? Classic Spanish menu. So omelettes and cheese, then. Welcome to 1964.
Rating for dating? Made for it, in theory. In. Theory.
Tip? No.
Change one thing? No. Change everything.
Going back? Not likely.
Compare & Contrast
El Vagon de Beni
"Spanish classics in a unique setting."
"Worth a ticket? If you enjoy traditional Spanish dishes."
In Pictures
On Google Images
What's the story?
Well, let's get the obvious on record. This looks lovely. Numerous outdoor dining spaces, under trees. It's next to a road but quiet thanks to lots of running water and well placed greenery. There are nesting boxes in trees and rice lights in glass hangers. It must look a treat at night. Even with plastic grass.
But there's not a lot of point aiming for smart if your food's scraping for scruffy.
This was a major disappointment, with not one course containing enough passion, enthusiasm or pride in its cooking or ingredients. Ever felt you were in the way of the chef knocking off? Or that the staff had decided you were a bunch of one-visit interlopers best tolerated? I know now.
And so, dear reader, we hit the starters.
Fried chorizo appeared to be the kind you buy in supermarkets for picnics and whatnot. Frying it left it rock hard and almost inedible. But a sextet of ham croquettes were creamy and perfectly OK. I'd have had some fresher looking ham, for that garnish myself. And it's not got much prettiness going on. Greenery? I'll just look at the trees and plastic grass instead.
Huevos estrellados with torreznos came with bacon chunks, *not* deep-fried pork scratchings. Tasty , but egg, bacon and chips, as my ultra-cautious dad always insisted on holidays to Hastings, is neither a bold choice or going to bother Masterchef in a hurry as it's bloody hard to do badly. Goes well with a nice Luis Cañas though, no denying it.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE
That empty space replicates the one on the plate where another garnish should have been. The spuds (pressure cooked, I think) had a hint of smokiness in the seasoning which I liked. But they were served on five entirely different dishes, which I definitely didn't. Slightly al dente, they'd probably been cooked in buere noisette (cheffy term!) to get that smokiness. There was some in the middle of mine, still uncooked.
Service was steady until the main courses finished. As this point, our group of six appeared to disappear. Everything else needed asking for, sometimes partly by semaphore. And, foolish me, I'd left my my big red and white check flags in the wardrobe. It was like being shipwrecked. From time to time, waiting staff appeared on the horizon, but sailed by, defiantly not making eye contact, minding their own business. I wonder would the business have minded if, fed up with the charade of playing charades to order, we'd set course for home. There were no chupitos/digestive shots, which was hardly a surprise. Having paid no attention to us, they simply wanted shot of us.
All in all we'd have done no worse with some nachos and fries with three sauces at the OK Corral bar in the centre of town. There, the bilingual waiter was friendly, amusing and quick; the beer came in large glasses; there was a nice tapa of cold chorizo (unfried, good decision). That, and they seemed to take a bit of pride in their place. So go there.
Arriving home from this experience, we got trapped in our lift. This was as unpleasant as you might expect. I mention this as it was quite stressing and, naturally, much worse than lunch. But it may mean my impression is coloured and, as a result, I'm being unduly kind.