Viva Madrid

We’ve been patronizing this restaurant for over 15 years now. It’s a cozy spot for some familiar flavors. Some of the staff have turned over since the pandemic but I’m glad Viva Madrid is still vibrant. We usually hang out at the bar and order a few of our favorite tapas. The house sangria is a must have. It’s one of those places that you need to visit more than once to taste the variety of items on the menu and compile a list of favorites. Consider starting with a green olives, batatas-bravas, jamon y queso, then graduate to mushrooms and chorizo, oxtail stew and/or squiring cooked in its ink. Like I said, it takes a few visits to figure out what you like.

I’ll start with the positive. Our waiter was amazing. He was very attentive. Kept the water coming and brought out our dishes in a timely manner. He was great. The restaurant was busy inside and there was an hour wait. We decided to wait for a table outside to be cleaned and out table was ready in about less than 10 minutes. I really really wanted to like this place but it was not a good experience for me. Having been to Barcelona, Madrid, Cordoba and Sevilla, and having authentic Spanish food all my life. let me just say that the dishes did not compare to the real thing. First of all, everything we tried was so SALTY! My goodness. We ordered multiple tapas including the patatas bravas, oxtail stew, bread basket, tortilla española, croquetas de pollo, and the garlic bread. The best was the bread basket and the patatas bravas. The patatas were more baked tasting than fried, missing the crunchiness but the flavor was good. We also ordered the Paella Canarias and the Nachos Españoles. No, just no. So salty it was borderline inedible. Are those canned peas on the paella? Probably. So disappointed. It was my birthday dinner and I deserve a birthday dinner do-over somewhere else.

I went to this tapas bar years before, and this restaurant experience was pretty similar - loud, fun, and filled with tasty tapas! My friend and I got a pitcher of sangria and it was sweet without tasting like pure syrup . The tapas we got were reasonably priced and portioned well. I especially like the Spanish variation of the empanada - mouth is watering just thinking about it! I will say the service was pretty lackluster. We sat at the bar but the bartender maybe checked in with us twice throughout the whole meal. One plate of ours never arrived, and when we alerted the bartender, we were still charged for it on our final tab - we had to bring it to the attention of the supervisor to get it off out tab. Beside that, I would stop by again - not a lot of tapas bars in the area, and the food is definitely worth the visit again and again!

We were very disappointed about our experience in this restaurant. It is not 100% authentic about flavors. It was mostly sweet which is definitely not a Spanish flavor. As a professional in bakery their homemade bread like they mentioned is definitely not homemade but industrial. The only dish which was nice to eat was the black squid. It tasted fresh and flavorful. Sangria was a shame. Normally you should get lots of fruit in your drink but here was mini pieces. The environment is nice but service was also terrible. Lack of attention from our waiter. We had to call him several times for filling our water, bills,…