| rev:text
| - I occassionally go to malabar because i love spanish tapas and there arent many options for that in charlotte. however, i dont think i can quite put it in four star territory both because ive had higher quality tapas in other cities and because of some customer service issues.
i think it is best to go to Malabar at lunchtime. You save money this way and although the food is good, its not good enough to pay big money for. Save the big money for tapas places in larger cities (The Iberian Pig in Atlanta and Amada in Philly come to mind). Also, the best item on Malabar's menu is only served at lunch-the torta sandwich. It has albondigas,avocado, manchego cheese, and a spicy paprika sauce on it and the combination of these ingredients is amazing. the papas braves that come on the side are fantastic as well especially with the aforementioned paparika sauce. The various cured meats are usually very good and are on both the lunch and dinner menu.
On the dinner menu, there are both tapas and larger entrees but I would urge people to stay away from the entrees because theyre priced a bit unfairly. The name 'entree' is very misleading. Many of their entrees arent much bigger than the small plate options yet cost at least twice as much!
Unfortunately, Ive had some bad experiences with customer service at Malabar. When i went a few days ago, my server was very rude and couldnt answer even basic questions about the menu. Two of the cheeses on their cheese plate werent familiar to me so I asked him about what sort of cheeses they were. He looked at me as if I was a complete idiot and said 'uh cheese. what do you mean what kind of cheeses?". Im sorry but thats just inexcusable. If you work at a Spanish tapas place, you should be able to give a brief description of the cheeses since thats a pretty important part of the tapas experience! Even though he couldnt tell me much about the cheeses, I took the risk and ordered the cheese plate anyway. Two of the cheeses were good, one tasted like plastic. The service also tends to be slow.
The bottom line: This place works to satisfy my fix when Im craving tapas but if Charlotte had more tapas options, it likely wouldnt be at the top of my list
|