Emilio's Tapas Bar

Great food, competitive prices, and entertainment 6 days a week.

Emilio's will ALWAYS be Rick's to me.  This dive-y spot is known for its Friday night jazz jams.  Yesterday was one of my brothers' birthday, and we ended up at Rick's (sorry) to celebrate.  Another brother came to play sax.  It was the first time the three of us had been there in YEARS.  It was a GREAT time.  It is a very welcoming environment for musicians to come and "sit in."  There were people there from Charlottesville, D.C., Canada and Russia, and everybody gets to play.  And solo!  Saxophones, trombones, trumpets... oh my!  Lady E (who has been singing at Rick's for over 23 years) is a most entertaining emcee and singer, and she made sure everyone in the place knew it was my brother's birthday.  It really made him feel celebrated, I'm sure.  If you come for Friday night jazz sit ins, get there by 9 p.m. so you can get a good seat.

Live music every night.  Open mic night on Mondays.  Oh, the food is not that great (had the rice w/ sausage and shrimp... kinda like a jambalya only supposed to be Spanish).  The bartender more than makes up for it, though.  And Christopher is a great waiter.  Enjoy!

What can I say, I was excited about tapas....but it just didn't pan out (pun intended)

Executive summary - don't eat here.

First, i've been there plenty of times for drinks. I've actually been coming here for the last 15 years even before it was Emilio's. It's a fun spot, but not unlike any other joint in the fan.

First, the wine list isn't bad. Decent prices, decent selection. We ordered a white, but it came out cool and not cold. Now i'm all for serving wine at the proper temperature but I wished this was about 10 degrees cooler.

The service was great, no complaints there.

The food, oh the food. The menu was creative and everything sounded delicious. Unfortunately things just weren't executed well. We started with bread and salsa. The bread was a normal hoagie roll cut into almost slices. No taste, no texture. The salsa was good, and it was only two bucks...I guess I can't complain. Next we had their signature shrimp and garlic dish. 6 overcooked shrimp swimming in a sea of olive oil and garlic. The funny thing is, it didn't taste like anything. Tons of garlic in the dish, no garlic flavor in the shrimp and they were completely under seasoned. The ham croquettes were good, as were the potatoes jonny, but I'm pretty sure the "aioli" was just mayonnaise  with some paprika. The rest of our dishes were crap though. The eggplant came out with the skin on, and lacked any sort of flavor. Now the pork skewers had tons of flavor, but I think they used all of the salt in the kitchen on these. Maybe if they had saved some for the other dishes they would have been better. On top tasting like a salt lick, they had a similar texture. I think my belt would have been easier to eat.

To top it all off we had a coupon from <a href="/redir?url=http%3A%2F%2Frestaurant.com&s=c5fe485af4df376130bee54f875814d79c4d7913e1258123b1206d2bdbf4873b" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://restaurant.com</a>, where we had to spend at least $50 (the bill was $55, after a $22 bottle of wine). We bought it because it did not state anything about excluding alcohol so we assumed it was okay. When we tried to use it, they said it says it excludes alcohol on the website. I didn't see anything on the website (I pulled it up on my phone). Then they said that the coupon says that they have to comply with ABC laws, which means they can't discount alcohol. I told them that they wouldn't be discounting alcohol because we ordered more than $25 in food and they could apply it to the food. They stood firm and said that they couldn't do it, the $50 had to be before the alcohol. The server was wonderful throughout this, but the owner was just being a twat. We told her that she should have the owner fix it on the website so it's clear.

I would have given it one star, but I have to say $55 for 6 dishes and a bottle of wine ain't bad. If it had been more expensive I would have been really upset. Luckily I just learned my lesson and I will not go back for dinner.