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| - Let me start by saying that I was very excited thinking about a new Spanish restaurant in town as they are few and far between around here. Having traveled quite a bit in Spain we are huge fans of tapas and paella. So we went to Tapas Papa Frita with great anticipation for a delicious meal. I am sad to say that this restaurant was a complete letdown for a variety of reasons.
The restaurant itself is absolutely lovely. I loved the way the place was decorated with representation of Joan Miro's work, since he is one of my all time favorite artists. The restaurant presents itself very nicely.
We decided to try this restaurant also because their website advertised "During the month of August...everything on the menu will be buy one and receive the second one at no charge" for happy hour 5-7pm. Our interpretation of this was that you could buy one item and choose another item for free. The reality was that it was buy one item and get a double portion. This was not clearly worded on their website.
We sat at the bar and were immediately met with a pretentious attitude form the bar tender which is typical, but unfortunate, in many Scottsdale restaurants. He became more rude when he found out we did not want to order drinks. This makes no sense to me because the meals cost quite a bit more than drinks would have so it's not like his tip would have suffered. After that he left us to sit for a very long time before taking our order. So long in fact that the manager had to come around to see why our order hadn't been taken. The bartender finally came around after a prompting from his manager and took our order.
We ordered Txipirones en su Pinto (stuffed squid) and Alcachofa a la Romana (fried artichokes) for our tapas. For dinner we ordered the Paella Valenciana for our entree, to be shared since it was double portion. The fried artichokes arrived on the cool side and the batter was soggy. As I pulled the batter away from one of the artichokes I could taste that it was a marinated artichoke, which was clearly canned or jarred. The appetizer was soggy and unappealing. The stuffed squid arrived and for a "double portion" as the happy hour special stated, we received 3 squid. My question is what is the full sized portion? 1.5 squid? The squid was tasty, it was served in what I'm assuming was a blank ink sauce with a spicy tomato sauce on the side. This was the only redeemable part of our meal, it really was quite good. The bread and aioli that was served before the meal was also very good.
On to the entree, our "double portion" of the Paella Valenciana. I should say that we've eaten enough tapas and paella in Spain to where we have a very good idea what to expect from these classic dishes. This was not authentic Spanish paella. First it's impossible that it be truly authentic since it came out in about 15 minutes, traditional paella takes at least 45 minutes to prepare. It was served in a cast iron skillet but it did not have that chewy, crunchy texture that paella has when it's actually finished in the oven. The rice was on the firmer side when it should be mushy and there was a flavorless watery broth whereas true paella should be rich with saffron flavor and the rice should have absorbed any liquid that it was cooked in. The sausage that it was prepared with was tasty but incredibly salty. The chicken was dark meat which I found disappointing. The shellfish was fine, albeit the shrimp were overcooked. Overall I am very sad to say that it was a terrible dish of paella, it was not authentic and not even really worth eating which is why we left a third of it behind.
Lastly, the restaurant was very warm and the bathrooms appeared to have no air conditioning or the vents were closed. It was 110 degrees today and they had 2 doors right by the bar where we were sitting propped wide open. I understand that it's a new restaurant and they wanted passersby to know that they were open; however, in this day of eco-consciousness, I found this to be an unconscionable waste of energy. Moreover it made the restaurant very warm and uncomfortable. So in my opinion the doors being open resulted in a lose lose situation.
Thankfully our bill was low due to the "double portion" special because I would have been incredibly disgruntled had we paid full price for bad food and bad service. I think Tapas Papa Frita has a nice concept, but they are definitely not ready for prime time. I can tolerate a pretentious Scottsdale restaurant when the food is dynamite, but this is not the case at Tapas Papa Frita. It's both pretentious and serves bad food. It's a pity because the place is lovely. I hope they pull it together so they can stay in business, but we will not be returning here.
PS* patxi g. who reviewed right below clearly works for this place as he reiterated the same bad wording of the happy hour special and the review seems overly phony.
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