Meson Sevilla Spanish Cuisine

Before watching Sex tips for straight women from a gay man, the wife and myself wanted to grab a quick dinner in the area. Our plan was to have Bareburger, but as we walked along 46 street towards 9th avenue we saw so many new restaurants! We decided that we should try out some new place.

So yes, we decided to get creative, and try something new. Enter this Meson Sevilla review. This place was one of at least 2 Spanish cuisine restos in the area, hmmm tapas… The other one was called Sangria followed by some number, I can’t remember. This one had a whole bunch of awards and accolades on display outside. We were impressed by the fancy Zagat rating, and the TimeoutNY dining awards and we thought that this place should be great. Yeah, that was our very first mistake.

My wife and I decided to go with the tapas as our main meal, we wanted to sample several of the items. So let’s start working our way down the list.

The bread – Very weak

There is not much I have to say about the bread. It didn’t look appetizing, but I had to try it in order to fairly review it, right? Well, I should have simply trusted my eyesight on this one. My guess? Bodega bread thrown in a microwave. Meh.

Main courses

The tapas themselves come out on this cool little thing where they stack up the dishes. It’s like a little metal thingamajig where they can stack up 3 tapas dishes. It’s pretty cool and clever, nice way to save space on the table. Ah, but the novelty of this thing is short lived and overshadowed by the less than impressive meal. Let me tell you about it!

Crab cakes – Very weak

I love crab cakes, they can be extremely delicious. Yet once again our friends at Meson Sevilla disappoint. My wife barely ate any of the crab cakes, and much like myself, she loves crab cakes! This thing was pretty bland, and felt more like eating tasteless bread that may have been lightly smeared with a dash of crab. That was rather disappointing for us both.

Grilled Calamari – Weak

This dish was decent, probably one of the better ones of the evening. The texture and cook to the calamari rings were pretty good. The flavor was ok, but could have been much better. Bland. The lady thinks that they were ok, but not fresh. I’m inclined to agree with her on this one. Not fresh.

Croquette – Decent

This was the best dish for me. I’m a potato lover, and though I asked for a chicken croquette this thing was all potato. My wife seems to be convinced that they used some milk based thickener or something, but I only tasted the potato. Thinking that this taste may have been anything else but potato makes me want to puke.

Steak – Decent

The steak comes seated on a bed of bread. We both agreed that the meat was decent. The taste was pretty good, the cook was also nicely done. This comes in second place out of the four tapas dishes we tried.

Ginger ale – Super sweet

Seriously Angel? What in blazes could you possibly have to say about the ginger ale? Well, let me tell you! I happen to have ginger ale at nearly every establishment I try, so I feel inclined to speak about it. For instance, did you know that some places will take your order for ginger ale, right? But they actually don’t have any, and instead of saying that they don’t have any, they’ll take some coke or Pepsi, fill in about 3/4’s of the glass, then fill the rest up with sprite or 7up to lighten up the color and call it ginger ale. Clever isn’t it? Not so clever when the patron cannot under any circumstances have caffeine. This ginger ale tasted extremely sweet, so I was inclined to ask if it was legit ginger ale. Allegedly it was, the guy seemed honest so I accepted it.

By this point me and my wife were pretty much done with this place. We were both still a little hungry, but we didn’t want to keep digging into this hole of sub par food. We both agreed that you can’t mess up frozen yogurt, so we decided to have some for dessert to top off our meals.

Frozen yogurt and fruit

Remember how about 20 seconds ago I said that they possibly couldn’t botch froyo? Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is the dish that really soured the evening for us. Seriously, I felt that this had to be a joke, I was simply insulted. Dude, seriously, how can you serve this to your customers with a straight face. When I demonstrated my findings to my wife, she said I reminded her of Gordon Ramsey.

So I called over the waiter, he came by and I took my spoon and attempted to penetrate this rock hard frozen yogurt. No such luck, so I banged the spoon on it really hard and again attempted to insert the spoon. Then to further illustrate my point, I held the dessert upside down, the fruits didn’t budge, they were frozen solid in place. I told the guy to please take the dessert back, and to ensure that it was removed from the bill.

Come on man, I’m working out hard these days. If I’m going to have a cheat meal, or dessert, it has to be good! Why would you treat me this way? Did I do something to your family, Meson Sevilla? Did I accidentally call your kid ugly? What did I do to deserve this type of ice cold treatment? Get it, see what I did there? I said “ice cold”, because the froyo was frozen rock solid.

Let me ask you guys a question, so how long do you think frozen yogurt sits in a freezer to reach that level of hardness? I mean, come on you guys! We all have the food network on cable, we all watch the cooking shows, and some of us have even been on cooking shows! By the way, if you haven’t already done so, make sure you catch my episode of “Cook your ass off” on HLN via upwave!

In any case, after watching years and years of cooking shows, what is one of the major, key items that guys like Gordon Ramsey and Robert Irvine emphasize? FRESH PRODUCTS MY FRIENDS, FRESH PRODUCTS! If you skimp on the product quality, or if you freeze the product to save a few dollars, then you probably will not get a return visit from the customers! We can tell, I keep telling you, we get the food channel! So it is better to use fresher products, not over freeze and satisfy the customer! This way they will come back and they will also tell their friends! Come on you guys, I’m not even in the restaurant business and I know this! You can’t give a customer a food product that they can’t even eat, I mean what was I supposed to do with that froyo? It was a rock, I was actually insulted that it was presented to us, I mean, come on man.

At one point I had to use the bathroom, and I’ll say this too could use better up keeping. There was urine on the seat, and all around the floor by the toilet. Pretty gross. The music appeared to be some form of Spanish oldies, I’m not sure if it was being filtered to sound that way, or if it was actually old music. That was kind of cool though. Finally, to really put the nail in the coffin, these guys add the tip for you. How presumptuous of them.

Okay, if you haven’t figured it out yet, unless these guys reach out to me or NYCTalking directly, and inform us that their business practices have changed, I’ll never, ever, ever, ever, in a million years come back to this place, or recommend it to anyone. I’m sorry, I truly hate to speak ill of a place that is someone’s livelihood, and I truly hope that these guys do the right thing going forward, but at it stands this place is a solid no go.

My wife took some really nice artsy pictures of the food, but what’s the point of even posting them? Shame…

Meson Sevilla on Urbanspoon

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