Eight of us met for dinner at 6pm on a Saturday night at El Quijote. I was expecting to enjoy it, but I was really disappointed by the food and service.
We ordered a pitcher of sangria for the table. It was okay, but it had very little fruit in it.
I ordered the mixed seafood paella to split with a friend. For an extra $6.50, we were allowed to share it and got an extra salad to start. The salads were small. However, it came with a selection of three dressings for the table to share. They were bleu cheese with lots of chunks, a version of thousand island, and a vinaigrette with chunks of onion. The paella was too heavy and left a pool of grease on my plate.
My friend ordered the baby salmon and was quite pleased with the texture and preparation of it.
In terms of atmosphere, the restaurant was way too crowded. Our table was shoved in a corner. The way it was positioned meant that I had to move to let people in/out from another table. It also meant that the server wasn't able to properly serve our food or refill drinks. He had to literally lean on me to reach my friends, and I tried to get out of his way as much as possible. I would have hoped that we wouldn't have had to help so much with the service in terms of moving things on the table to make room, reaching for our plates, etc.
The service was also poor. When we finished with our food, they came to clear the table. In addition to taking the plates, they also wanted to clear all of the water glasses. Basically, they were trying to get us to leave, and we hadn't been offered dessert or anything else.
I wouldn't go back to the restaurant.