This is a quickie review – you can find the original (glowing) review here…
This is a grumpy response. I’ll admit it, my expectations were raised by the excellent lunch I had a few days earlier. This time, I was drawn in by the wine flights for which this place is renowned.
I ordered my ‘classic reds’ wine flight made up of two Carmeneres and a Cabernet Sauvignon.
I decided I’d keep with the fishy theme which I’d started at Casa Lastarria.
First up was one of my favourite lunches on any day of the week – smoked salmon with a potato and dill salad (a fairly standard Swedish meal). The salmon here was fine, but the salad was dressed with a bitter salad with full-size capers and a LOT of salt. I ate the salmon part.
The main event was Chilean sea bass. This was practically raw in the middle – it had NOT been cooked properly. The salad was again dressed with an excruciatingly acidic dressing. Often such a strong flavour will be cut with a little oil or a tiny amount of sugar. This was unrelenting and was, frankly, inedible.
I complained. No-one came back to me. I followed up. Apparently the chef thought that it tasted fine and a partly cooked fish was an acceptable thing.
Stuff goes wrong. Someone forgets an ingredient in a dressing or needs to give the fish a couple more minutes. That’s okay and I’d not freak out about that. But it’s how it’s dealt with that matters. Bocanáriz decided my opinion about the food I was paying (a lot of) money for mattered so little they’d not respond to my complaint. I wasn’t impressed. But I didn’t lose any sleep over it! Onwards and upwards!
