The PEPA Restaurant Barcelona Review

March 10, 2023By TinaPosted in Failed

My first impression was wrong. I thought this place is a hidden gem in the city. But did not expect how many disappointments were waiting for us. And I will tell you all of them one by one. I noted 7 comments for myself to share with you. They were so kind at the beginning and almost forgot about us for half of our visit, but let`s start the story from the beginning. It was my sister’s birthday and she wish to visit this place. She has been there once before few months ago with a local person. And she did like that the whole cafe was singing greetings for birthday person. They turned off the light and were bringing a dessert with a candle. Today we had no luck getting such greetings. I will tell you about it a bit later.

I did call in advance and booked the table for us. When we arrived everyone was looking so happy to see us and asking something in Spanish. When we sit at our table they proposed the baby chair for my baby, which we declined it. One more waiter proposed the chair and we accepted. The waiter gave us just one menu. When we asked about the English menu he gave us strange paper with the menu of the day. We did not find any information about drinks and ordered a beer for my sister and I, as well milk with foam for my baby. We used a translator and chose from a menu what we want. And while we were doing the order my baby put salt into her milk. The waiter immediately wanted to change her cup for a new one. I said that is ok, all babies have experiments. And left her salty milk.

When we have done our order bad things began to happen. I went to the toilet and realized that this is not the cleanest one. Pieces of paper were on the floor in different areas. I did not get a lot of attention to it. And came back to our table in a good mood.

We ordered “Solomillo de ternera”, “Parrillada de verduras” and something from the menu express from the beginning, and later we ordered “Coulant de chocolate blanco” y “Crema Catalana”. I can notice that they have a baby’s menu but my baby wanted a fish today. The waiter suggested one dish for her, we accept it his suggestion but later realized that this dish was not good for the 2.5 years old child. I was good with a beer. My baby was happy to see her fish. This was the best about this dish. It was a mix of seafood in the batter with some tomato salad. They did shrimp in the batter with their shells, so all batter was staying in the trash after paring. Also, the rest of the seafood in this batter was completely dry. With this dish, they gave to us our grilled vegetables. It was various vegetables with sauce. We liked it a lot as it was soft like from the oven with grill marks.

Vegetables grilled at restaurant La Pepa

Just as we finished it, they brought our meat dish. They did not ask degree of doneness of the meat. It was medium rare. Honestly, I prefer well done but we accepted it. We did not want to spoil our day, but they did their best to spoiling our visit. After we at our meat dish, nobody came back to us for the next half hour. We came to this place at 3 pm and at nearly 4 pm waiters started to clean the floor. They were busy with different things and did not care about us. We found one waiter and ordered the desserts we chose before. We did not order drinks for desserts because we did not know what to order. We wanted to get tea. We asked about the menu for drinks and they said that need to use a QR code which did not work. They did not care. We have got upset with them at this stage because after we finished our food and got the waiter next to us to order desserts, we had to wait a long time. We decided to eat our desserts fast and leave, where they did not give us our desserts till around 4:30pm. The service was overwhelm slow for such a place.

Let’s back to the moment with birthday greetings. We had to remind the waiter about the cake and candles because we realized that he forgot what we said about my sister birthday celebration at the beginning. He brought it to us with no celebration or whatsoever. At the same moment in another part of the restaurant, someone got greetings with the song “Happy Birthday to you”. It was humiliating. All these situations look like obvious racism to me. The desserts did not save the situation. My sister said that her cream was not as hot as the previous visit and had a different consistency. My chocolate coulant was more like a cheesecake with a drop of chocolate in the middle. The cake was not hot but next to it had a lot of ice cream, some crumbs, and jam. I think they should change the name of this dessert.

To add salt on the wound, we had an odd situation with the payment. When we asked about the bill by showing hands writing in the air, the bartender waved his hand to us to come to him to pay. We dressed up and come to the bar counter. I note that there was no place to leave outerwear and it just lay in the stroller I had with me. They made us wait a bit more until another person come. They were messed up with English. Just some of them were speaking English a little. Finally, we got the bill and I was trying to pay, but my card asked for the pin code which I forgot. I asked for a few minutes to wait and moved the money to another card where I do remember the pin. The person has gone somewhere. I finished the payment with another card and the pin was ok. The terminal said that transaction was “approved”. After that, the person returned and said that the payment was unsuccessful. I asked to get information about the last transaction from their terminal because the payment was already processed by my bank. They said this is impossible and the money will come back to my card in a few days. Thank God, I had no more money in my bank today and I said they need to find a solution. We asked: Shall we stay in their hall until the money will come back to my bank and I will able to pay again? After this person started to call somewhere. I have no idea what they discussed because they were speaking Spanish. We were waiting 20 minutes until they found my payment. They gave me a copy of the transaction on A4 paper.