Mar i Terra

After a glass of wine at Blackfriars Wine Bar, we decided to try Mar I Terra. We like place like this a little bit off the road. We walk in and immediately receive a rather gruff greeting from the fellow behind the bar. he rolls his eyes, not a decent way to welcome customers. So we ask about the outside garden seating, and again the body language, like why are you here? I tell my wife we should leave, but she says let still try the restaurant. So we get a seat. the guy stares at me for at least a minute, and i stare back. Finally we see him leave briskly(now maybe service and attitude will improve). Another man come over to us who has replaced him. He takes or order. We get a bottle of wine, olives, and bread. In the meantime after we have been seated, another group shows up with 8 or so. We are feeling much better about the restaurant. However the food starts flowing at the table of eight, and flows and flows. The guy behind the bar who took our order comes and and we tell him we have not received any food that we had ordered. For some reason the food we ordered was shown to the table of 8, and never to us. Our waiter(behind the bar) never came over one time to see how we were doing. We asked several times about the food with no results. Half an hour and nothing. He comes over again and we ask about our food. Still nothing. We had been simply dropped. So i finally got fed up and went up and demanded the check. I also told him we had no problem paying for the wine but the bread(marginal) and the olives(marginal) should be at least be complimentary. He forcefully stated did we eat the bread and olives, and of course i said yes. I also said we did not get the food we had been promised. We never saw it or had at least an apology or at least that they were cooking the food. At this point who knows what is going on. Our waiter does not ever bother to inform us of anything. He just says mistakes are made. So when this restaurant makes the mistake, why should we have to suffer because our food is never delivered, no one checks on us, and then they have the nerve to tell us we had received food when we never did. I was told that the original barman was fired(i understand that, but dont understand why he was hired). All we wanted was to try the tapas at that restaurant. just a nice night out. they did everything they could to make a customer unhappy. And i thought it was just the original barman, who had the attitude. I was wrong.

The food was excellent, we are both veggies and were very well catered for. The salad of manchego and rocket was particularly good. The sangria was also really nice, refreshing and light. The service is on the "rushing you" side of attentive, you have to keep hold of things or they get swept away a bit. Despite saying we wanted a moment to enjoy the last of our drink we were presented with dessert menus and our sangria was poured out for us. We felt hurried along which was a shame. Had we been allowed to linger longer we may have had something from the delicious looking dessert menu. However as our sangria jug was swept away (I felt sure there was still something to be poured from it's depths) so were we and we were out on the pavement before we knew what was happening. I know it's a busy spot but that doesn't give you the right to hurry along so much. All that said though, the food won out. Cocktails along at the BFI afterwards filled the rest of our evening.

Don't go. They are very very rude. So what if the food is okay? These people give London restaurants a bad reputation. They don't deserve your money. Manners go a long way sir!

This is my favourite tapas restaurant in London, by far. The food is consistently excellent, the wine list varied and tempting, everything is good value for money and the staff are genuinely friendly and helpful. The interior of the restaurant is basic and unpretentious, and all the better for it. My only very minor complaint is that, on summer days when the doors are open, you can sometimes smell a little cigarette smoke from the outdoor area creeping into the main restaurant (usually this is from a member of staff!). Otherwise, I can't fault it. Really, very good indeed.