Viñedos Aurora at Pamplona Tapas

What a great little place in Lodi :) I purchased a Groupon, because it included both food and wine, one of my fave combos in the world.
Wasn’t sure what to expect, but found this little gem of a restaurant in downtown Lodi very easily. There was some festival going on, which made parking kinda difficult, but we lucked out and found a nice garage.
Our server was very nice, and the food was great. We had a choice of tapas from which to choose, and they were delicious. The accompanying flight of wines were tasty and complemented our tapas selections wonderfully. We left with a great red, and look forward to coming back to Vinedos Aurora for a full sit-​down dinner, as everything looked and sounded so dang good!
Do yourselves a favor and give this place a try. :)

We made a reservation online for 7 PM on Saturday evening as they were supposed to be open from 5 – 10 PM for dinner. We received a confirmation for the reservation, but when we showed up, they were closed. Notification would be nice. How rude!

Good wine and good food. Service was excellent and the pourer couldn’t have been nicer.

The Loca I have on hand was printed March 2015 with all local wineries of Lodi and their locations and hours. On there it says open Sunday from 11am to 7pm, so to our surprise they were closed around 6pm. Please be open during suggested hours or do not put these hours for everyone to rely on.

We have been there twice before; the food was great, the service was very good and server very friendly and the place was clean and quaint. I was looking forward to coming back and sharing the experience with our friends. Our friends came in from out of town to experience some Spanish tapas with us. When we entered the restaurant I knew there was a problem there was a young lady at the back bar on her phone texting, The carpet was dirty. The place seemed unmaintained as I looked around I noticed the restaurant had not been maintained since we had been there last. It makes you wonder what the condition of the kitchen was like. Lets talk about the food it was good this time but not great the waitress was not familiar with the dishes as she could not answer the Questions that our friends had. After we ordered she came back out to tell us that there were out of LAMB (how do you run out of Lamb on a sat evening? (bad management) the service was slow and the food came out in random order. The Paella was lacking in the rest of the meat it was supposed to have. Not the same. There were several dishes that you eat with bread and they don’t provide enough to go with the dish. When we asked for more bread to go with the rest of our food, she said there was no more bread– but then added «we’re on a limited supply». I guess you only are allotted a certain amount? When you have customers spending near $ 100 are you really worried about handing out another .50 cents worth of bread? That comment at the end just confirmed my first impression when originally walking into the restaurant. The atmosphere wasn’t as clean and inviting, and lacking in service and details. We won’t be returning anytime soon.

Super friendly staff, delicious wines, and yummy food and deserts. We ordered the sintesis wine with the flank steak, duck, melon and Ham, combination paella, and Chocolate cake and flan. Everything was delicious. We will definitely be back! Mexican influenced Spanish food is delicious
, affordable, and flavorful. Definitely give this little place a try!

Perfect place to relax — on a date or with friends. Love their parings of wine and food. Personal service; intimate, yet not at all crowded. Definitely revisiting!

First time Coming, my cousin bought through groupon for 2. included wine tasting, paired w, appetizers. it was heaven! And, had the best server ever named Ramon!.. he was Super funny. Very attentive and loved the atmosphere very cute setup. We will. Be back!

The GOOD:
The food is fantastic! A feast for your eyes as well as your stomach. I’ve been several times and haven’t found a bad thing on the menu yet. I love the variety of flavors and ingredients you don’t often come across.
The BAD:
The service is breathtakingly slow! (Hence the 4 stars rather than 5) That being said, there’s usually only one waitress when 2 or 3 should be working so it’s not all the staff’s fault. If you decide to eat at this place, just plan on a… leisurely meal. The food is so good its well worth the wait.

Well, the waitress Britney was great, the atmosphere was great, the food on the other hand was pretty blah. We both ordered the paella and we’re disappointed to find it was more Mexican food than Spanish… It was a tomato base and we could not taste the saffron at all. I have never had authentic paella before but my wife has and this was not it. We won’t be back.

Really great food. I mean exceptional tapas. Good service. One of my new favorite places. We will be back!

Third time trying to come here and they’re closed again. Note my photo of the hours of operation posted on the door. It’s Friday night 7:30. Hostess at Alebrijes (same owner) next door said they «closed early» but offered no explanation. Interestingly she made no effort to entice us to eat at their restaurant that is actually open. I was excited to try this place for a while but I’m done trying to eat here.

Tried coming here a couple of times and was really excited to try the food they have always been closed. This time we approached the entrance on a Friday night at 7pm and they were closed. We inquired with the host and the restaurant next door and she said” sorry they closed early today”. No sign or notice. Super lame, I won’t be back.

The reason for 4 out 5 stars is because we had 5 things and 4 of them were AMAZING and one was awful.
1. Sangria– very flavorful and heard the waitress open up a fresh bottle of wine. A lot of places use old wine to make sangria so I was impressed that they used a fresh bottle.
2. The tuna with avocado in the mason jar was AMAZING! The presentation and flavors were great. As good as it gets!
3. Croquetas were very flavorful and the chipotle sauce on top was very good.
4. Shirt steak with chimichuri was very flavorful and tender.
5. Seafood Paella was awful! Why would you serve imitation crab meat? if you don’t have fresh crab meat you are better off not serving any at all. The rice tasted as if it was cooked with water and not with broth. No flavor at all. The chef here is so amazing that I expected way more when it came to the paella.
Overall ambiance was great! The service was also amazing.
This would be a total 5 star place if the paella wasn’t so bad.

Stopped in here after a 12 hour shift at work for a light dinner. The atmosphere is cozy and reminds me of being in a tapas bar in Spain. I loved the roasted almonds with sea salt and rosemary and the garlic marinated olives as well as the fresh fruit white sangria. Before this dinner I had never had paella, so I don’t have much reference to go off of but the chicken/​lamb/​chorizo paella was tasty and a large portion than I expected. The skirt steak was tasty as well. As a note they say the paella takes a minimum of 20 minutes, but it was busy and it came out in about 10. Looking forward to coming here again, especially on farmers market evenings

Excellent, excellent, excellent. This would be for the food, service, and simple quaint ambiance. The wine selection is very limited, but what they had was good and paired well with the meals.
The lamb was phenomenal!

great tapas! Perfect for client meetings, or planning trips!

Didn’t even know this place existed till we dined there yesterday, and all I can say is the food was magnificent… having visited Spain last September, we were in the mood for the variety of Spanish Tapas cuisine…
Loved everything we tried. Adobo ribs, Manchego cheese, crab stuffed piquillo peppers, Prawns (yummy.but if you don’t like to shell and dehead don’t order these) and the amazing Paella… everything is packed with flavor… everything was delicious!
Great wine, and sangria… We will definitely be back.

Firstly, I have no clue why there are such rave reviews on this place unless we just caught them on an «off day» which was a Saturday afternoon of all days. And the place was dead. My wife and I were the only ones there and we spent a good hour and a half there waiting on the incredibly slow service.
My wife’s family come from Spain and the Philippines so we are familiar with the style and the dishes, so we were very excited with high hopes for this place.
The waitress was a nice girl, but utterly and completely clueless about the menu and useless as a server. I can overlook small things like not being on top of water and drink refills here and there but we had to flag her over and ask for anything we wanted. We ordered a strawberry mojito and a glass of sangria and those two things took about twenty minutes, literally. And when we flagged her over to take our food order is when it really fell apart.
She whips out her ipad and was stumbling through the menu hopelessly as my wife ordered our four tapas dishes in Spanish as they’re listed on the menu. We finally just say it in English and she still had trouble, but managed to enter it in and walks away. About a minute later she comes back to our table and asks for clarification on two of the dishes and we tell her «yes those are correct».
The food took forever to come out. We had ordered chicken croquettes, paella, Duck breast, and garlic shrimp. After waiting for more than a half hour the waitress emerges from the back with our chicken croquettes and apologizes for the long wait, then walks away without acknowledging my empty mojito glass and the empty water glasses. The croquettes were just OK. Kinda tasteless and was actually saved by the wonderful chipotle sauce it was drenched in.
Next came our garlic shrimp at which point I had to ask for another mojito and she realized our water needed refilling. Back to the shrimp. It was four decent size shrimp in a butter and garlic sauce with some bread. Again, it was just OK. I love me some shrimp but for the price it just didn’t impress and lacked in flavor and the bread was boring and nearing on stale.
Our final two dishes come out, the duck breast and the paella. We were pleasantly surprised with the duck breast, it was pretty good and had a tasty sauce on it but, the paella was incredibly horrible. It was an odd tomato based slop that tasted like ragu. It had disgusting, overcooked, minuscule shrimp in it and two pieces of terrible imitation crab. Two little chunks. Why? I just couldn’t understand why anyone would do this. And fake crab? Gross. A complete letdown.
When our bill of $ 65 came we felt completely robbed. For $ 65 we could’ve had food 10x better or even cooked a five star meal ourselves for less.
We support small restaurants and are really disappointed that we can’t support this place but they really need to get it together here. And the waitress we had was incapable of the job and we heard her talking to another worker (I think one of the chefs) and overheard her say she hasn’t tried anything on the menu! What!?! How can you answer questions about the food? Oh and also, when she brought out our shrimp she said, «ok here’s your paella» to which we looked at each other and said, Oh-​kayyy. And she then comes back out and says «oh sorry that wasn’t the paella it was the tapas». Again, oh-​kayyyy! Haha this is all tapas. Anyway, she just doesn’t have a single clue and shouldn’t be working there until properly trained or somehow magically gains some common sense.
I don’t intend to be cruel, but we were thoroughly disappointed and I felt I needed to get our opinion out there for others like us and maybe save someone the headache we experienced.
Until they step it up and get different servers in there, I wish I could give it zero stars. I don’t think this place will be around very much longer.

Soooooo late in this review!
First, I LOVE this place! I feel like I am in downtown Walnut Creek or a posh place up in Sonoma County. We asked Ruben if we could rent out this place for my sons graduation party. He said yes! When we arrived, the place was gorgeous! White linen tablecloths with perfectly placed accompaniments, food displayed along the back table, and even a «Private Party» sign displayed on the front door.
The food we ordered was delicious. The Marcona Almonds were lightly flavored with Truffle oil, Rosemary and sea salt. We also had grilled vegetables, Chimichurra Steak, Paella, and a mix of fancy olives. Wine & Beer were available, as was a tasty cucumber infused water.
I can say the Marcona Almonds are 1000% better than the Marcona Almonds that go for $ 27.00 a pound at high end grocery stores. The grilled veggies were perfectly cooked, not to oily and seasoned lightly with salt/​pepper. The steak was soooo good! I rarely eat meat, but the marinade complemented the steak beautifully, so I had a few pieces. The Paella is a rice/​grain dish, and Ruben added muscles, clams, chicken, lamb, sausage, asparagus into this rice dominated dish.
Everyone who attended had a great time and raved about the food. My only regret is we should have ordered additional items to try. Will definitely have to get a babysitter and head here soon. Getting takeout from here is not the same.
We are very happy we choose (and were accommodated) this place to have our son’s party. We would not hesitate to choose this place again.