Livia C.
Yelp
Came here for our anniversary dinner. My partner and I had high expectations given our love of the sister restaurant, Kefi. We're both Latino so we were excited to see our own cultures' cuisine executed in a high-end and trendy scale.
Perhaps our Brazilian and Colombian upbringings make us overly critical, but we were both disappointed by the range of the food menu. They're marketed as a "tapas" restaurant, but none of the menu options were particularly innovative or exciting, with the exception of the guacamole con Atun, which is essentially a tuna tartare. That was delicious. The other tapas options are overpriced yet micro-serving sizes of very basic Latino dishes. For example, the elote, papas bravas, empanadas, and fried shrimp were all doused in the same orange sauce, and all garnished with seemingly the exact same spices and cheese. For this reason, they all tasted the same.
We were also disappointed that the menu was very obviously haphazardly translated on Google translate. The verbiage in the menu was incorrect for many of the items, and as native Spanish speakers, it was very apparent that the menu was not written by a Spanish speaking person. For example, the beef empanadas were listed as "empanadas de Vaka," which translates into "cow empanadas," not "beef empanadas." It's a small detail, but to someone who speaks the language, the small details matter.
What we did enjoy were the drinks and the dessert. I thought the drink menu was diverse, and I thoroughly enjoyed my Blood Orange Margarita. We were really blown away by the flan and the tazon de chocolate, which our server lit on fire upon service. It was delicious.
Overall, I think Vida is worth trying, but given that Kefi is right down the street, I'd recommend dishing out the big bucks there instead. The restaurant is quieter, seating is more intimate and inviting, the food menu is more exciting, and it is a better dining experience.