Malaga

Malaga is closed. I had been coming to this restaurant since I was a child with my dad and my family. This past Tuesday (1÷13÷15) I went with my daughter to find it closed with signs thanking everyone for 42 years of service. Very sad to lose this lovely restaurant.

Service ¹⁄₅
Food 2.5÷5
Place ⁴⁄₅
My experience here was bad. The sangria was watery and weak. The waitress spilled the beer and didn’t replace it and she charged me the beer. And the beer was bad. No estrella de Galicia.
The food wasn’t great. It was barely regular.
Not recommended.
Update: the previous 2 starts is now 1 star. next morning we had food poisoning.
definitely not going back back there.
note. if you are reading this while you are seating there, careful with the soups.

Gone here a bunch of times with the girlfriend for dinner. The staff is always nice and accommodating. The place itself is small and has an intimate feel to it, which only makes sense given that it’s located in the middle of a side street.
In terms of food/​drinks — The sangria is really good and a must order for us everytime we stop in. We typically split a bunch of tapas, but the trick is to order half of them first and then order the second half when the first set of tapas arrives. That way you avoid the food getting cold by the time you are finishing up. If you go the tapas route I would definitely make sure to order the turnovers, shrimp in garlic sauce and the broiled chorizo among other options. All in all, the food won’t blow you away but the restaurant is a nice change of pace and fun way to eat a bunch of different things.

I live 3 doors down from this place and finally stopped in tonight after an evening flight back to NYC. Boyf and I sat down around 9:15 on a Saturday, maybe only 3 other groups in the place and the crowd definitely skews much older. We split a pitcher of sangria and it was a great place to unwind after a weekend of traveling. We split 4 tapas dishes, all $ 8: garlic shrimp (clear winner of the night for us), calamari (light breaded and fried, delicious), brandy meatballs (hearty and filling, 4/​order) and Serrano and olives (lots of serrano, not enough olives.) Overall, it’s a great neighborhood date spot and we’ll be back. Service is relaxed, so don’t come if you have a place to be. Lovely staff and seems like they have good happy hour/​good specials between 4 – 6 each day.

Very bad service.
We waited 15 minutes before server got our drink order.
Another 30 minutes before any food reached our table.
The bread and salad delivered to the table next to us by mistake. When the waiter acknowledged the mistake and promised our salad it never arrived .
Upon leaving there were no friendly smile from the restaurant you would expect.
One of the worst experience ever had
The food was just ordinary .
Will never return to this restaurant

Sadly, the food was terrible. We ordered the black bean soup; the octopus tapas; the yellow rice with chicken; and the chicken croquettes.
Everything was terrible. The chicken was dry, the octopus and the croquettes were inedible, and the black bean soup appeared to come from a can.
I wish I could recommend this place, but I suggest you steer clear.

A Gem
Authentic Spanish cooking and the best Spanish restaurant on the upper east side.
Stick with the classics-​a pitcher of Sangria and shrimp in green/​garlic sauce and life is good.
Service is exceptional, some of the best waiters in the city.

The food is delicious, cooked perfectly. I asked the waiter to choose three tapas for us and his choices could not have been better. The seafood paella was fantastic. Highly recommend.

Where do I begin? Ok, first of all, i’m sitting at the bar and the bar tender is «making sangria» and pouring equal parts water and wine into a pitcher. It’s already made with cheap wine, must you dilute it even further? Their «specialty» crab stuffed mushrooms were awful, the crab tasted like fake crab and the mushrooms were too small. Their artichoke tapas was super salty and my entrée was disgustingly salty. I ordered the seafood dish with a green sauce and it was extremely salty. The shrimp was cooked properly, a few of the mussels tasted «off» and the scallops needed another 30 seconds on the stove (makes a big difference, trust me). My side dish was sauteed spinach that had waaaay too much burnt garlic. Overall my entire meal and experience was not worth it.

I’ve lived across the street from Malaga for the past 2 years, and have always wanted to try it. Wine/​Sangria/​Tapas… what’s not to like?
Well, let’s just say after my visit last night there was plenty not to like. We were sat immediately and then proceeded to wait about 30 minutes for a waiter to come over to our table. I had to flag down a number of servers to let them know we still had not been taken care of. We ordered a bottle of wine and 4 tapas. Another reminder was needed to actually get our bottle of wine, and I have to say the wine was the only good part of the meal.
1) Patatas Bravas — bland with barely any spicy cheese sauce
2) Mussels in beer and bacon sauce — I didn’t eat these but my friends said they were the best plate we received.
3) Asparagus wrapped in ham — decent, but really salty
4) Manchego and spinach empanada (special of the day) — pretty tasty, probably my favorite dish
After we ate the first round of tapas my party of 4 was still hungry and decided to order 3 more plates along with another bottle of wine. The wine came right away this time, but the 2^nd round of tapas sure didn’t. After waiting over 45 minutes with no explanation at all from the waiter I was fed-​up and asked them to cancel our order and to bring the check.
I think the most upsetting part was that the server acted like everything was perfectly normal. I understand things can get busy and servers can get overwhelmed, but if you own up to it and apologize that goes a long way. I would/​could have been a loyal customer if my experience had gone differently, but I definitely won’t be back.
Luckily my apt is close by, so I was able to go home and heat up some day old pizza for dinner.

Great Restaurant, Good Service and Delicious Food!!! I’ll be back with all my family and friends. Very cordial, owner is very attentive and checks every table (old fashion awesome style!!!)
Food on time, Many types (areas) of sitting and good ambience.
We loved it there!!!

I am shocked by all of the 5 star reviews. Maybe they have sangria goggles? I first tried this place over 10 years ago. It was awful. Foolishly, I recently tried it again. The service and food were just as bad as I had remembered. Seafood wasn’t fresh. Salad was warm. Tapas was tasteless and off. There are several great Spanish restaurants in NYC. This is NOT one of them.

I am very upset with this place. This was one of the worst dining experiences I have ever had. My girlfriend and I arrived and were seated immediately. After ordering our meal we proceeded to wait over 1 hour for ANY food to arrive. The waiter showed up after 30 minutes and said we’d have food in a few minutes. 40 minutes after that, we received 4 of the 5 items we ordered. They were out of guacamole (I don’t know how that happens and how they don’t tell you when you order or in the hour we were waiting). The staff knew that we had not received anything and no one came over to apologize (not event the manager who kept looking over at our table). While waiting forever we were watching 3 tvs playing Food Network with sound. Why would a Spanish tapas restaurant have that playing during a Saturday night dinner service?
We finally got our food. The stuffed mushrooms were good and that was it. I’m not one to leave food and we barely touched anything else. When they finally did apologize for the food taking so long, the waiter commented that it gets crowded on weekends. You’re a restaurant in Manhattan on a Saturday night and you’re telling me it gets crowded on weekends and that’s why the food was delayed. Are you kidding me? Also, the drink menu had sangria listed at $ 6 a glass. We ordered one and were charged $ 8 on the bill. When we mentioned this to the waiter he said «yes, the price is wrong in the drink menu but it’s right on the dinner menu». After making us wait and serving us cold and poorly prepared food, they were unwilling to honor the price clearly in the menu or comp any portion of the meal.
This place is right around the corner from my apartment. I wanted to like it so much and was excited to go. I wish I could give zero stars.

3 of my colleagues came here spontaneously after work. 6 tapas total:
1)mussels in beer and bacon sauce: decent one out of the 6
2) chorizo in red wine: not amazing but one of the other decent ones
3) gambas in garlic sauce: is tiny probably frozen shrimp. overcooked bc it was tight and chewy. overpowered with garlic
4) stuffed mushroom with crab and shrimp: okay.
5) asparagus wrapped with serrano ham: SALTY and looked unpresentable
6) meat croquettas: okay. too creamy
Half pitcher $ 15: red sangria, tasted like wine was dumped in at the last minute.
Tiramisu is terrible it was dry. was it even dipped in coffee/​espresso? So sad :(
Coffee was watery
Crème brûlée: the top was not cooled and the inside was watery. usually you can crack the top, but it stuck to the spoon and dragged like mozzarella.
Service: old man kept trying to make us eat more like the entrees and suggested us to order 6 tapas but we did order 6. the place is going downhill because they changed their business time to only 4 to 10:30pm. Also we split 3 ways with a credit card and he had the nerve to tell us HOW to split it. and then stamped on the receipt cash tip preferred.

This place is LEGIT. Anyone who gives this place less than 5 stars is cray-cray…seriously. My friend and I came here yesterday around 5pm for some tapas and sangria and it did not disappoint. We were by far the youngest and least Spanish people in the restaurant. When a restaurant is full of old timers speaking the native tongue of the establishment, you know you’ve scored big.
$ 125 for two pitchers of sangria, seven small plates (we are fatties), chocolate mousse cake and two specialty coffees. What a deal! Everything was amazing — not one thing I ate wasn’t great — except maybe the chocolate cake. it wasn’t really my thing, but I ate it anyway (duh). My noteworthy in my opinion were the stuffed peppers and the mussels and the garlic shrimp and the meatballs and. oh wait, everything!
If I lived on the UES I would definitely come here very often. If you’re looking for authentic Spanish food, this place is certainly worth a visit!

Nice atmosphere and excellent service happens at this Spanish restaurant where the red sangria rules and the tapas rock… to flamenco music in the background. Tapas mandatories include the garlic shrimp, mussels in beer and bacon, lobster croquettes (when available), and chorizos. You will be dipping the bread in that garlic sauce. They make excellent paella and don’t forget to take home what’s left in the pot. Also the Mariscada con bogavante (seafood and lobster) with green sauce is a specialty of the house.
Good for large parties and you won’t be rushed out the door. Sangria is $ 21 a pitcher and you will definitely consume at least half of one all by yourself.

This is definitely a neighborhood gem! I love Spanish cuisine and Málaga never disappoints!
I’ve tried most their tapas and they are all AMAZING, though some of them are very small for the price. Their croquettes are better than what I’ve tried in Madrid or Barcelona. Sometimes they have lobster croquettes available, you MUST try those. They have mussels in beer and bacon sauce which are to die for. Their red sangria is delicious too. Stay away from the white one though.
Their waiters and staff are very nice.
They recently remodeled and I think it took away from that authentic Spaniard feel it had. Still a great place. Check it out!

I came here on a Saturday for an early dinner. A friend was taking me out for my birthday and we had to be near Union Square by 8pm. Walking over there she kept telling me that this was one of the neighborhood gems tucked into a side street. It sure was.
Even at 6:15pm the restaurant was nearly half full, which is a great sign. I’m ravenous walking in and can’t wait to sit down and start eating what I have been told are traditional Spanish tapas. Unfortunately, it took a long while to even get water in our glasses, let alone a bit of bread on the table, and that was after we ordered and received our wine. I’ll look past that.
Instead of ordering entrees, we decided to split seven tapas plates. We got everything from papas bravas and beef croquettes to the clams casino and ham-​wrapped asparagus. The tortilla and papas could have used a bit more seasoning, but otherwise everything was simply amazing and I felt like I was in Barcelona again. The wine list is very impressive, and although they ran out of the wine I was drinking, they managed to make up for it with yet another great suggestion.
The two of us ate nearly everything, but were too full to finish it off completely. At about $ 8 per small plate and glass of wine, the prices are right on and the quality is apparent.
If I’m in the mood for tapas again, this is the place to go on the upper east side. Salud!

Our favorite Spanish restaurant on the Upper Eastside.

Came here with a friend for sangria and tapas. Luckily, I had dinner plans afterwards because the food here was really… not great.
The sangria did not disappoint. We got the red, and it was refreshing — fruity but not too sweet. It also didn’t hurt that sangria is $ 20/​pitcher.
Tapas are another story. The guacamole was disappointing both in terms of quantity (tiny portion) and quality (it was oddly dry and the chips were kind of stale). The asparagus wrapped in Serrano ham (espada de jamon) was tasty, but the ham was a bit too greasy. Chicken croquettes were creamy and the most delicious of the three tapas we ordered.
Altogether, I feel bad giving this place a low rating because the staff was friendly (great service), the actual restaurant was really cute, and the sangria was good. Based on the strength of the sangria, I would maybe come back just to have sangria, but the restaurant is classy enough that I would feel super-​awkward getting tipsy/​drunk here. Perhaps we would have had a better dining experience if we had ordered off the dinner menu?