Cobras & Matadors

Doesn't Recommend

jshaklan

Joined 5 years ago

Used to be great, but Spain has left the building.... I used to LOVE this place. In fact, I've eaten there with tons of friends and dates and taken out-of-towners as well. The asparagus was to die for, and so were many other things, including the luscious seafood paella. But notice I said WAS. The past year or so, the restaurant has been fiddling with the menu. Paella? Bye-bye. Asparagus? The manchego (Spanish) cheese on top is out, Grana Padano (Italian) is in. Italian? The dish has lost something. On top of that, the menu has gotten smaller. It used to contain more meat choices -- there was some sort of lamb chop in a port wine reduction at one point (amazing!) and just more choices overall. Last night, I had a tough time finding anything I wanted. Thankfully, the cheese plate was delicious, but without the mouth-watering asparagus (why did they "fix" what wasn't broken??) or the paella or so many other dishes I liked to order, I lost the urge to return. The roasted mushrooms aren't particularly great and the lentils, sorry, not exciting enough for a main dish! Cobras & Matadors, please go back to your old yet amazing, flavorful menu! Till then, I'll just have to say goodbye, and I'm afraid I can't send anyone else there either.

Recommends

Taravincent

Joined 4 years ago

Great!!. This is a great little Los Feliz restraurant, everything was just wonderful, I want here with my friends for one of my friends birthday, the service, the food and the atmosphere was just wonderful!!

Recommends

Maya83

Joined 4 years ago

So much fun!. We had such a great time! You can bring your own wine with you and there wasn't a corking fee. I really enjoyed all the plates. We asked our server for suggestions and he was spot on. I really loved it! Only thing was it was loud, and it being so small of a space, it kinda feels like you're sharing a table with the people next to you. Which some people actually like!

I would totally reccommend this place to anyone.

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Poeticalmath

Joined 5 years ago

Wait up!!. Well I've never heard of some vegetable paella. But I will have to try it the next time im out. Now this isnt spain, but its close to it without actually going!!!

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iamericwillis

Joined 4 years ago

FOOD ROCKS!!!. This place is awesome! The one star people should stay home and cook their perfect tapas themselves...or go to Spain and complain about those tapas. Sometimes it's not the staff...it's you.

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FrakYa

Joined 4 years ago

Yum Yum Yum Yum YUM!!!!!. I am a total foodie, and I absolutely love this place. The ambiance is simple, yet cozy... love how the walls are lined with corks, and the lighting is moody and romantic. My husband and I have been here many times, and we have never had anything that we didn't mutter "yuuuuum" while eating! One of my favorites was a steak [not on their regular menu] topped with an oozy delicious blue cheese. The steak was so juicy and tender. They marry flavors together that sound odd, but work magic. We love this place!!

Recommends

TomChatt

Joined 5 years ago

nice mix of traditional and nouveau tapas, excellently prepared. We had a great meal here and would definitely go back. They had traditional Spanish tapas as well as some trendy creations. (Think AOC: Spain edition.) It's all tapas (appetizers), so you just start ordering plates for the table and take things as they come. We started with "lomo embuchado", stuffed dates, and an assortment of Spanish cheeses (properly served with quince, marcona almonds, and tapenade). The "lomo embuchado" was a thinly sliced Spanish ham with slices of a mild tres leches cheese, served with raisin toast, and a tomato/caper salsa that just made my tongue stand up and applaud. (Even though the large proportion of tapas are served on bread, our waiter and the kitchen did a nice job of bringing us things with the bread on the side so my gluten-intolerant husband could enjoy them too.) The dates were stuffed with almonds and cheese, and wrapped in bacon, delicious morsels. We added a skirt steak, perfectly cooked in orange juice and paprika, a mushroom and asparagus paella (really more like a risotto, but an impeccable flavor), and "pintxos" -- lamb/beef meatballs covered in a piquant red pepper sauce, toothpick-skewered together with a small double-bent green pepper. Everything was a delight to eat. We finished with a flan, which was rich and firm, like the flans we had when we were in Spain. The place has its quirks -- it gets noisy (it's a small place and they fill it up), there's an open-fire oven in the back corner which is charming but occasionally a bit smoky, and they don't have their liquor license. However, they happen to own a wine shop next door that sells a selection of Spanish wines, which we wandered over to, purchased a charming bottle of Bierzo Mencia (young and fruity, something like a Beaujolais) for $21, and were charged no corkage fee. Not a bad compromise set-up. The whole meal for three people, tax tip wine and all, was $125. All in all, it was a delightful meal.

Doesn't Recommend

burkedan

Joined 5 years ago

Waste of money. I was so disappointed by the food. The vegetable paella, was more like the Trader Joes frozen mushroom risotto (although inferior) rather than a paella. The tuna dish probably involved taking tuna out of a can and putting it into a little spicy pepper. And the other dishes were not much better.

We will not be returning here, I would advice you not to bother in the first place.

Recommends

troywarkentin

Joined 5 years ago

Always Liked this Place. This place was my first intro to tapas style dining years ago and i still like the vibe and the food.

Recommends

godwife

Joined 5 years ago

Too F**king Loud. I was there 11/ 21/08 with a party of 4. The food is very good and the prices are reasonable. I love the small wood burning stove at the back of the dining room where one of the chefs is working; it is a lovely thing to look at while enjoying the atmosphere. The waiter was slightly on the rude side but when we asked him his name he warmed up a bit. I loved the rioja braised short ribs and the machego cheese/ serrano ham on toast. I also reccommend the tuna stuffed peppers. We ordered 8-10 different dishes. All the sauces were magnificent, truly, but the waiters kept trying to take our the dishes away too quickly. We had to ASK for bread to sop up all the deliciousness. And that's just plain silly! The bread pudding is 5,000x better than the french toast (we ordered both). We brought our own wine so the cost of the meal was really quite a value. You have to walk through the kitchen to use the restroom which I like because suddenly you realize all that good food is coming out of this teeny-tiny kitchen; I was impressed.

The music was distracting and made it perfectly impossible to have a decent conversation. We were all shouting at each other. Very uncivilized. Maybe next time I'll use text messaging to communicate with the person sitting next to me. Our party was seated at one of the central tables, directly in my line of sight, on the bench against the wall, sat a gentlemen waiting for his dining companion. He sat there very quietly with an open bottle of wine and 2 glasses. He was his own small still universe while the rest fo the room roared around him. I watched him for at least 45 min before we finished up and left. He never once poured the wine or even took a sip of water. Whoever he was waiting for hadn't yet shown. I hoped to myself that the person he waited for so patiently hadn't been frightened away by the STUPIDLY LOUD MUSIC.