Chato Tapas Melbourne

We live in the Southern suburbs of Melbourne and it took us over an hour to get to Chato in peak hour traffic. We were starting to question our decision to meet friends for dinner at a place so far away, especially with the traffic. However, the food turned out to be simply excellent. We ordered the Seafood Paella, croquettes de jamon, and patatas bravas. It was a lot of food, but we couldn't resist because it was the best. The staff were friendly and tolerated my attempts at speaking bad Spanish with good humor. The only downside of the evening was that where we were sitting near the hall, it was quite cold. This may have been because the air conditioner was on, which we only noticed when we were leaving.

Good food although a little expensive. Nice selection of tapas. Not as good as last year when we visited several times. Very noisy.

I took mum here for her Birthday lunch and from the moment we walked in the door we experienced great service, a cosy atmosphere and delicious food. We had the honey chicken, scallops, cauliflower and patatas bravas, which were flavoursome and had just the right amount of spice. The Shiraz was also excellent and matched well with our meal. Mum had the crema catalan for dessert and I had 'the monk' which was chocolate decadence! I will definitely be back again.

Some of the food here was very good and some was very ordinary. Most disappointingly the desert was just outright boring. The friends we went with said that it had gone downhill recently which would explain the earlier reviews.On that basis alone we won't be going back but then the place was just disorganised with not enough staff for a while and then halfway through our meal will told we would have to be out by 8:15 PM even though in 2 previous contacts with the restaurant and upon arrival we had not been told that.A couple of the staff members were very friendly and doing their best while a couple of others were very offhanded. According to our friends again they had noticed a frequent staff turnover which speaks to poor management although we can't attest to that obviously first-hand.All said and done, the Indian restaurant just down the road smelt more advertising both upon arrival and leaving so we probably should have gone there:)I suspect that if you are local and there on a night that wasn't too busy and knew what order you would have however a very nice meal but it certainly not great Spanish food as we experienced it in Spain.

This was a trip to 'the other side' of our hometown to catch a band (Stars) at Thornbury Theatre, so we needed somewhere local for a quick meal.Upon arrival the plain exterior shopfront proved a misleading foil for the amazingly good, authentic (we've eaten in Spain) food. We stuck to small shared plates and drank Sangria. Everything was excellent. Highly recommended.