Karl's review of Cigala

Having used this website to obtain the top 10 tapas bars in central london and seeing that Cigala came up and was very close to my home me and my partner went round for some afternoon tapas (sat 18/4/09) – service was absolutely crap – and we were the only people there – waitress forgot about us sitting outside for 20mins and then jovially told us she had been chatting with friends and forgot about us.

Food was either burnt or had a bitter taste from burnt garlic. 4 medium sized prawns (obviously re-heated and not cooked fresh) not even de-venied – which I am fine with but to charge that much… Came with some bitter garlic and olive oil for £7.50 is ludicrous. Pimentos de Padron – tiny portion with more than half burnt and crispy – nothing traditional there – hard stale bread, 5 halves of anhcovies per portion. burnt morcilla with an egg and migas (can't even describe how bad it was) – only saving grace was the Patatas Bravas but how hard is it to put a spicy tomato sauce on roast potatoes!!! it's an outrage that they have had such good reviews, can charge so much and appear so high on this list – although I haven't been to all the places in the top ten – I can assure you the best place for authentic good priced tapas is Navarros.

I did raise my concerns at the time with waitress who was not interested one bit and told me ‘everyone else seems to like it’ – well that's ok then love – would never go back and would suggest you don't even bother going if your thinking about it.