jaleo

bad service. had dinner here on 5/16/09 and theirservicewas third rate. the waiter disappeared. food is just dumped on the table. have had better tapas in portland. i have eaten here before and theserviceand food were better. i think they have slipped and are getting by on their past reputation. management needs to be held accountable.

great (wine) experience. several friends and i met at this location a couple of weeks ago and had a wonderful time there. having previously lived in dc, i had already been to the capitol-area location and more or less knew what to expect. first of all, the space will surprise you if you're used to their other locations. what it lacked in whitewashed charm, it more than made up for in modern grandeur. the highlight of our evening was the oenophilic passion of their beverage director, jill zimorski. for transparency's sake, i should admit that jill and i worked together about a decade ago at a great, now-defunct, french restaurant in charlottesville, so i expected her highly-informed approach to our wine service. jill steered us to multiple bottles of perfectly-pairing and unique wines - and gave us great insight into why these were such interesting bottles. the food and tableservicewere much more than adequate as well. if / when i am back in this part of northern va, i will certainly make it a point to return.

deception: tapas and no bread to suck the juices. i've been enjoying tapas at jaleo since i arrived to dc in 1997.
last year i went and they did not bring the bread and oil as usual, after asking they told me they bring only bread upon request...
yesterday i visited the one in arlington.
this time they refused to bring bread.
it seems that jose andres is not involved any more and should take his name from the place, if he is still involved, he needs to pay attention to his restaurant. it became another typical chain restaurant.
how can you serve tapas with no bread??? this is inexcusable and a cheap move.
other issues i found:
-servicewas horrible
- dishes were bland, pollo al ajillo had no garlic, served with a dark sauce and chicken consistency was uniform, that chicken was boiled and not seared. bean salad the same, lack of taste.
- tapas sizes seem to be getting smaller

it is a shame, i used to enjoy this place very much and i will not be coming back.

do you really know what tapas are?!. it may not be the best or close to perfect traditional spanish cuisine, but rating it for what it is - it is fairly good! they do a good job at the taste renderings with some dishes, but don't quite hit the upper mark with me! the downside is most folks don't understand tapas, and end up getting the short end of the stick value-wise. tapas typically are snacks in spain, here, it's become a way of making more money on smaller dishes. overall the ambience andserviceis mediocre, the tastes are above average - but don't expect real spanish for your taste buds. don't go their hungry!

food was truly stellar andservicewas spot on. great date place, given food generally should be picked together and talked about. definately would go back.

recommend!. pretty big fan of this place. definitely hard to find something that doesn't appease your palate with such an extensive menu. my husband and i went there while in town for our anniversary. this place was packed as it was a saturday night. we were seated at an ok table... now, we're both in the restaurant industry and know the irritants that come along with it... changing tables being one. we saw one little corner table, secluded to the side and after already being greeted and waited on, we asked if we could change. totally accomadating, nice, and incredibablyservicefriendly. food was great andservicewonderful. with the busyiness of it all, we were a little worried but it was awesome.

great food; strange service. we were a party of four with 6:30 pm reservations on a saturday night of restaurant week. the place was already packed. two of us arrived at 6:29 pm and the host wouldn't seat us until the entire party had arrived. i know that restaurants don't want to have large tables occupied and then have no shows but for a party of four that is unlikely and having to stand in the doorway was not a good start to the evening. had i been seated at a table i would have ordered wine while i waited. instead i had to stand in a crowded area in front of the entry door, blocking the way of other restaurant guests.

the selections on the restaurant week menu were excellent and we had a wide variety of tapas. nothing disappointed and, having lived in spain, i found the food to be authentic with a twist.

however, and this may have been a result of the restaurant week menu, they required that we order everything at once and then they randomly and quickly brought all the tapas to the table. that is absolutely wrong at a tapas restaurant. you should make a selection of your first round of tapas, have an opportunity to leisurely eat them, discuss them, and make your selections for the next round. theirservicemodel greatly reduced our enjoyment of our experience and their profit. if we had been able to linger over each round of tapas more wine would have been consumed, thus increasing their profit margin. we were dining with people who had not had tapas before and they found the food presentation to be totally confusing and off-putting, and i certainly couldn't explain it since i'd never experienced anything like it in spain.

i would go again to jaleo, but i would be insistent on having theservicemy way, the spanish way. this felt like an assembly line, not a dining experience.