La Catalana Free Tasting today (Sunday) from 12-8

My apologies if I missed this being posted somewhere else on the board, but I wanted to let everyone know that La Catalana (next to Havana Rumba) is offering a free, open tasting today both as an open house as well as a chance to gage people's reactions to their food. I've already enjoyed two meals there in the last week myself and am hoping to get by there today, but may not be able to make it as I have one of our underground dinners tonight - lots of prepping to do.

If you have the chance, I know they'd love to see as many faces as possible today.

Enjoy!

Their food is quite good. It's the kind of food you find in neighborhood restaurants around Barcelona.

However, we were there Friday, and the service was so bad it we were actually laughing. Two servers for the entire restaurant, and one appeared to have zero experience. No forks given after the first course. No dishes cleared the entire time. A look of surprise when we did ask for some to be cleared. No spoons with soup, and no one in sight to ask (we ended up picking up bowls and drinking). No check, even when asked. No wine list (in fact, the server didn't even seem to know what a wine list was "a wine list? "she asked, a puzzled emphasis on the word "list"). Not a single water refill. Wine list - finally - was for Coco Lokos given instead (common ownership?). No request for a second drink, even as empty glasses sat. Two people sat down, waited at least ten minutes for menus, and then left.

I'm not sure if the food is worth going back, but, again, it was good, neighborhood restaurant quality.

Michael and I are looking forward to trying the new spot soon!

New restaurant hiccups. They must have been really overwhelmed.

Domino, the owner, told us that they were assuming that there first few weeks would be slow, and that they were really not expecting the numbers they got Friday or Saturday.
And I think they're training servers from scratch, so some patience might be needed.
But the food is solid Spanish neighborhood food, and Domino is extraordinarily gracious.

Domino, the owner, told us that they were assuming that there first few weeks would be slow, and that they were really not expecting the numbers they got Friday or Saturday.
And I think they're training servers from scratch, so some patience might be needed.
But the food is solid Spanish neighborhood food, and Domino is extraordinarily gracious.

There you go. It is so hard to figure out what the crowd will be. I bet this weekend will be smoother.

Do they have a website? I would love to see a menu!

We ate there last night. The people were very nice, and our server did a good job. I was a little disappointed in my Eggplant Parmesana. It was grilled eggplant dusted with parmesan and a little bit of tomato sauce in the bottom. Good thing I wasn't very hungry. However, my daughter had the chicken with raisins and it was delicious. Great flavor. My other daughter had the fish marinara and it , too, was delicious. Tender fish chunks with clams, shrimp and mussels. One glass of wine, three dinners, $42.00
I will definitely go back. Every item from the fish section was appealing.

[Robin Garr]

The people were very nice, and our server did a good job. I was a little disappointed in my Eggplant Parmesana.

Maybe it's just me, but I would strongly recommend going with the Catalan food, allowing these folks to show off their native cuisine, rather than picking the comparatively few Italian, Greek, etc., dishes on the menu, which I suspect they put on simply for fear that some people would shy away from trying something new.

We just got back from dinner at La Catalana. We will not be back; it was very disappointing. First of all, while it is cute that the menu seems to be written in a very rough English translation, it would be helpful if it were more descriptive.
For example, the pig book. All the menu says is "pork, cheese, bread roll, ham". Actually, it is a deep-fried pork chop stuffed with cheese. I guess maybe "bread roll" means "breaded", but that was not clear. If we would have known it was deep-fried, we would not have ordered it. Along with the pig book came potatoes, which tasted good, until my daughter found two long hairs in two separate pieces of potato. How you can get a hair inside a cut-up piece of potato, I don't know. One of the hairs was long enough that I saw her pull it out of her mouth and I thought it was a long, stringy piece of cheese from the pork chop.
I ordered the chicken soup, which was very salty and definitely not worth $5.55 for a bowl of soup.
We also ordered the stuffed eggs, which the menu described as "egg, tuna, mayonnaise". They were good, although the mayonnaise was definitely the main ingredient, and overpowered the tuna to the point that it just tasted like eggs and mayonnaise.
We both remarked that we would have rather come home and eaten processed turkey sandwiches.

We had our problems as well. But it begs a different question, why do persons open places without any clue about service, style, menus, without finding help to get a place off the ground. They don't have a clue
and that is a shame. I don't, don't, really don't want them fail, but I give them less than a year if they don't get it together soon. Someone should warn them about what is at stake, and how unforgiving the public is and what a short window they have. Nice don't cut it forever.

I was really looking forward to dinner at Catalano – we like Spanish food, read good reviews, and were happy to have a cute nice independent restaurant not far from our home. As a topper, they had flamenco dancing tonight, which would make things even more fun. There were three of us, and we had talked about having a drink or two, a good dinner, and listening and watching the entertainment.
Unfortunately, it was one of the worst dining experiences of our life.

We walked in (remember – it’s cold outside, and we all were wearing coats), were shown to a table, and the waitress asked what we wanted to drink. I asked if we could sit down first, and she said yes, but what did we want to drink. I said we’d like to look at the menu before ordering drinks, she pointed to the table & said the menus were right there, and what did we want to drink. My wife finally ordered a diet cola, the third party ordered a water, and I said nothing now, I’d wait to read the menu.
We then took off our coats & sat down.

A woman who appeared to be the manager (she was helping the wait staff, running the bar, and controlling the tables) came to the table, and I asked her if I could please have . . . but I couldn’t finish, as she had grabbed all three wine glasses and brought them back to the bar before I could finish the sentence. I turned to my wife, and said that I guessed we wouldn’t be drinking tonight after all.
The waitress then came and delivered a water and cola, and asked what we wanted for dinner. I said that we had just picked up the menus, and could we have some time to read them? She said fine, and stood there without moving; it was very uncomfortable. My wife asked what she would recommend, she suggested #10 (a version of paella), and feeling rushed we ordered an appetizer, a soup, two #10’s, and another entrée.

The appetizer tasted fine, although the form gave us some trouble initially. We had ordered a mixed fried seafood dish, and were served what appeared to be breaded and fried quenelles (sp?). Unfortunately, rather than soft quenelles they were stuffed mussels in shell, which – breaded and fried – we didn’t realize until trying to cut one! More funny than a problem, but by this point any little thing was starting to turn us off.

Soup was fine. As my wife was eating her soup, the waitress came out and said that one of the #10 dishes was ready to serve – did we want it now, or did we want to wait until all three dishes were ready. Of course we wanted to eat together, and said so, but why would they cook one of three entrees early? All we could figure was that they had accidentally made too many for another table. The waitress said that the other two entrees would be ready in just a few minutes, so it would still be hot if we got all three at once.

Approximately 20 minutes later, all three dishes were brought out. They serve #10 (the paella-style dish) from a pan, and one waitress held the pan while the other removed items one at a time for one patron (eg: spoon one mussel, then spoon one shrimp, then spoon one spoonful of rice, and continue). It looked pretty, but by the time my wife had been served both my dinner and the third party’s dinner were cold. As long as two servers were serving, why couldn’t each have spooned one portion, thereby giving each of us a hot meal?

I thought the dishes tasted fine, although both portion size (and price) were small.

After dinner, our friend asked for a decaf coffee with a slice of lemon, and my wife asked for a decaf coffee with cream. Our friend got a half cup of espresso with a half of lime, and my wife got a half cup of espresso with whipped cream. We asked, and finally the bartender came over to translate. He told us that he had given both parties caffeinated espresso. For my wife, this was ok, although not what she ordered. Our friend has heart problems, and is under orders not to ingest any caffeine at all; luckily we caught it before she had finished.

I asked what they had for dessert. The waitress said they had flan, another item, and skewers. We asked what the skewers were, and the waitress said they were like little wooden sticks (!). I said no, what was on the skewers. The waitress said chocolate sauce. I had a brainstorm, and asked if the skewers held fruit, and she nodded and said yes. We ordered the skewers and a flan to split.
We were brought the skewer, plates, and silverware. I asked about the flan, and the waitress stated that she didn’t remember us ordering flan, but if we wanted it she’d bring it. The skewer was fun (not much for the price, tho), and the flan was pretty tasteless.

Finally, we asked if she could split the check. In brief, the answer was no, that their system did not allow it. We asked if she could just let one of us pay 1/3 of the bill, and the other pay 2/3. She said no, she could not do that. This time we asked for the woman who had appeared to be the manager, and she said that she would make it work.

All in all, this was a place that we had hoped to love, that we were really looking forward to, and I think it was our first and last meal there. I really wanted to complain to someone, but as the woman manager was a part of the problem I didn’t see that doing much good. The third member of our group did tell the woman then acting as hostess some of our problems, but the woman kept smiling and saying “glad you enjoyed dinner – come back soon”.

There are just too many good restaurants in Louisville to waste time on this one.

Stopped by for lunch yesterday by myself and found the whole experience to be slightly odd. Walked in the door and the host/server came striding up and stopped about 20 inches from me and said nothing. We stared at each other for several moments as if deciding which wrestling grapple would be most appropriate to start with. I said "Lunch?" in what I would consider a soothing tone. She cocked her head to one side and said "Eh?, to which I replied "I'm here for lunch" and with that she spun on her heels and strode away.

One table in the whole restaurant was was taken by a party of four ladies who were celebrating a birthday. I was led to a two top directly behind them. If I had removed the other chair I would have been part of their party. As it was I felt like I was part of the party, as they discussed their multiple appearances on "T-Bar-V" and the salacious details of (character name removed at the insistence of my legal advisor).

I was presented with the lunch menu and was drawn to the descriptions that Ellen mentioned except I liked the descriptions. Just cryptic enough to be adventuresome. It's like describing golf as "club, ball, grass, tee, pin".

Torn between the graphic imagination of blood sausage and pig book I went with the latter with no idea what would show up. A few minutes passed and I was presented with a plate. From left to right I had a small green salad, a small dab of yellow rice, 10-15 small fried potato chunks and a fairly good sized breaded pork cutlet.

I sliced into the cutlet and a bright yellow cheese sauce oozed from the center. The yellow associated with nacho cheese sauce. As I was pondering that a man showed up with a ramekin and said "Your sauce" and departed. I don't know what kind of sauce it was. Slighly acidic with the texture of Durkee sauce it complimented the plain breaded pork. Everything else was under seasoned (not seasoned) but edible.

Service was basic and lunch was priced right at $7.95. I left with my hunger sated but with no impression that this meal was representative of catalan cooking and no real interest in returning. Very neutral impression. Will probably head back for some other strange lunch experiences but will avoid dinner unless someone else posts apositive dinner review.

I'm going to suggest something unusual for this restaurant (and any others that may qualify).

First, let me say that I have never been there and don't know anybody there or anything about it other than what I've read here in LHB. I am assuming they might have something worthwhile to offer, either now or in the near future.

Second, let me also say I have absolutely no problem with any of the prior postings and know that they come from knowledgeable and fair-minded posters. All of them justified and well-documented.

I offer this suggestion simply because I like new indies and ethnics and want to see all of them do well.

Here's my suggestion:

Why don't we give this place (and all new places) a pass for 3 months or so? One, it seems there might be a language problem with this restaurant. Two, it seems obvious that they needed more of a shake-out and were not ready to open to the public. They'll either figure it out, or they won't. In either event, the problems will be resolved. However, I'm a little afraid the time they have to figure it out will be shortened by the early days' experiences there.

It's a tough business. It's not too much to ask a place to have its act together before opening to the public. But this place didn't and it may very well not have enough time to get it together before it's too late.

I'm really not a bleeding heart liberal (far from it) and am usually among the first to express displeasure when a place lets me down. And I don't know if I like Catalan fare, assuming it might be forthcoming. Lke Ed, I'm inclined to wait until there are a couple of positive reports - which may or may not come. But this sounds like a place that might have merit if they can keep the doors open long enough to figure out how to run a restaurant.

{Now dismounting soapbox - a half-gainer in the tuck position)

[quote="Ed Vermillion"]Stopped by for lunch yesterday by myself and found the whole experience to be slightly odd. Walked in the door and the host/server came striding up and stopped about 20 inches from me and said nothing. We stared at each other for several moments as if deciding which wrestling grapple would be most appropriate to start with. I said "Lunch?" in what I would consider a soothing tone. She cocked her head to one side and said "Eh?, to which I replied "I'm here for lunch" and with that she spun on her heels and strode away.

Too funny. I can just picture you both standing there facing off!!!