La Bodega has been around Montreal for about thirty years, a veteran of the restaurant business. It specializes in traditional Spanish cuisine, and no, it’s nothing like Mexican food.
My friends and I decided to go out for a nice dinner during the holidays, and since two of us had been in Spain this past summer and had thoroughly enjoyed the food, we decided to hit a Spanish restaurant and make a night of it.
La Bodega is an upscale restaurant located at 3456 Park in a charming old building. The restaurant itself is one big room with a large warm fireplace right in the centre, which makes for a very relaxed setting.
The atmosphere is quite cozy with its romantic lighting and unhurried waiters walking around checking to make sure everything is okay at every table. In the summer there is a terrace where diners can sit and sip sangria while gazing at the stars. In the adjacent room, there is a little bar where locals hang out.
There was one major detractor from the quaint old style dining atmosphere, a TV I don’t know if I’m alone here, but I do not think TVs belong in a classy restaurant like this one. In a sports bar, okay, a Jack Astor’s or Moe’s, a TV fits right in, but at a fine dinning restaurant, what the hell!!! It’s like, well, if your company is not good enough, don’t worry you can watch TV instead of having to talk. Who wants to talk anyway?!
Right, on to the food. Spanish cuisine varies according to region, geography and history. Experts believe that you can only speak of Spanish food in local terms. With this in mind, I was pleased at the variety of the menu. The restaurant combined fare from different regions such as Andalucia, Valencia and Catalunya to name a few. I was a little shocked at the prices, but was willing to overlook it.
Their selection of entrees is fabulous; fresh grilled sardines, gazpacho, grilled calamari and garlic shrimp. The table d’hote is quite pricey. Paella, the quintessential Spanish dish, ranged from $19 to $30, depending on if it is vegetarian, with chicken or with seafood. But it was just as good as the one I had in Barcelona. It is a dish of rice, vegetables and or chicken, and seafood, all cooked together in a cast iron skillet. The restaurant is worth going to if not simply to sample their paella, which they do very well.
For starters I had their gazpacho, which was very disappointing. Gazpacho is a cold fresh tomato soup with bits of onion, garlic, and cucumber. It is very refreshing on a hot summer day. La Bodega’s was odd. It had a strange bite to it that had nothing to do with spiciness, it was almost fizzy, like club soda. I asked the waiter about this and was told that the chef said that the mixture of oil and vinegar sometimes made it that way. I was quite disappointed.
Of my three dinner companions, one ordered garlic chicken and was quite shocked when she received legs instead of breasts. For an $18 plate, you would think she would at least get the good part of the chicken. Another friend had chicken on a skewer, and although she enjoyed it, she was not overly impressed. My last friend ordered steak and asked for it medium and got it almost raw.
Now, we went to La Bodega expecting fantastic food and were not blown away (except by the paella), but what was most unsatisfactory was the fact that there was no live Flamenco show as promised.
Flamenco is one of the cultural aspects for which Spain is most famous. It is a combination of melodramatic song, guitar and dancing. It originated among Andalucian gypsies and has continued to be a popular tradition. Nothing compares to a live performance.
They must have been on vacation sunning themselves on the beautiful Costa del Sol.
All in all, the atmosphere was nice, the service good, but the dished were unexceptional. I expected more from such a well-established restaurant. Ah well, guess I’ll just have to go back to Spain to get the real thing.
