El Machi - Ida y Vuelta

Ai, the chef had an off-day we hope! The dishes we ordered were out and we could wait 20 minutes. That of course is no problem! we never mind waiting for freshly prepared food bring it on! A complimentary pâté of fishes was offered for the waiting. It came in two pans. We saw it immediately. Arroz de marisco with extremely overcooked clam,(3), Congolese (2) and shrimp (1). You know when you overcook fish? It smells off. But ok, maybe the rice was nice. We love paella, but this rice was half raw. Give it 5minutes more, add some stock and make it nice… not like this. Partner’s dish same failure. Broken spaghetti with some sausage sliced. Pâté, yes, arroz, no. It is quite exceptional to have a good menu with over 100 dishes on it. Give me 10 good . Tourist trap? Almost there

I know this family of restaurants from their locations in Madrid and after coming to Santander I wanted to give it a try and I’m glad I did. They offer great authentic Spanish seafood and other dishes with great ingredients from the region. It’s a little pricy but the quality is spot on. Don’t miss their cheesecake at the end!

This place was pretty good! It was pricier than normal, but we liked the appetizer and all the dishes we ordered. Four stars because of a surprise we got when two people ordered the same dish - I ordered the Arroz Negro and got a whole pan for myself, but two ordered the Paella Marinera and had the same sized pan with the same amount of food split between them...but we were charged for TWO orders!!

Very good restaurant. The food was very tasty and special and the service was very good. I had cod fish in ink and my wife took 3 kind of fish stew. We took only main course and both dishes were enough for dinner. The place recommendation for dessert was quite a disappointment so the waiters removed it from the bill. We enjoyed it very much.

The food tasted very good. Servers nice, took care of us all the time on timely manner. It is beside the street but it was not a problem.

After reading some of the reviews we decided to order rice and we were not disappointed, we had the arroz de mariscos caldoso/meloso, it was absolutely outstanding.......great restaurant, great food and great service.......I would drive here from Madrid just to eat this rice again!

Food is amazing! Had the marinero rice and recommend it very much. Everything we ate was good. Its on the pricier side but worth it

I felt cheated: a small portion of Russian salad 16 Euros! This is more than double a reasonable price for that dish. The reason for the high prices is that it was made with white tuna, but the portion that was served to me barely had a few tiny pieces of tuna. Friendly but inefficient service: we ordered a few servings, and they forgot to serve us one of them, so we had to remind them that we were waiting for it. Saturday at lunch time the restaurant was half empty, I guess locals know that there are cheaper places to eat nearby. Absolutely not recommended.