Lexi M.
Yelp
It actually broke my heart that I had such a bad experience here after finding this place via Thrillist and seeing so many great reviews. I was really, really looking forward to coming here.
Half our party is vegan, so I called ahead to make sure they served vegan dishes, and the woman I spoke to said yes, very enthusiastically. Great! We arrived and ordered a bottle of wine plus 2 cocktails and 2 starters, but our vegan diners weren't interested in the one single vegan option on the menu, so we informed our waitress that this would be all we were having.
Immediately the manager came to our table and started berating us, saying that we needed to leave and she can't have us taking up space at her restaurant for 3 hours if we weren't ordering more food...which was upsetting because the majority of the time we spent there was simply waiting to be served. By the way this was about 20 minutes into our dining experience, so not sure why she was under the impression we would be there for 3 hours. Also in my opinion an entire bottle of wine plus 2 cocktails and 2 appetizers isn't an unreasonably small order.
We asked for the check, so we wouldn't take up any more of their precious space (interesting since half the tables were empty) and the check came, with the added bonus of a "diners fee" charging each of us basically just for coming in. Diners fee? I thought that restaurants bring in revenue by selling food, not charging people money just for existing... Anyways, we asked the waitress if she would remove it, and she said it was for the olives and the bread. (We never received bread so idk what that was supposed to mean) She said she would take it off, left with the bill, and never came back, so after another 15 minutes of being ignored and watching the manager talking to several staff members and pointing at us (lol) we decided to just leave cash on the table in the amount for the total bill minus the dining fee, but including a few euro tip, and go. We did so, letting our waitress know on the way out, and the manager actually came running after us out on the street to yell at us some more!!
Perhaps they treat fellow locals fine, but if you're just visiting, I would definitely avoid. I'm just so sad because I was really looking forward to coming here and it was just depressing since this restaurant was featured for being so great.
By the way- We were not stereotypical "loud Americans" being brash and obnoxious or making unreasonable requests. Just came in and had 2 appetizers and some drinks and I tried my best to communicate in the small amount of Spanish I know.
The food we had was eh, okay, so I'll give Barraca 2 stars for that part. But really, I'm just heartbroken that I had such high expectations from this restaurant and it ended up being one of the most upsetting dining experiences of my life.