I am attempting to make a few restaurant reservations in Barcelona. I am staying in an apartment so will not have the usual services of a hotel concierge to book restaurants.

I am not having luck with the booking engines on a couple of the actual restaurant web sites. The alternative, since I would prefer not to phone, is a third-party website like www.TopTable.com or www.ElTenedor.es.

Those of you who book restaurants in advance of arrival: Do you use these sites and if so, are they reliable? Which would you recommend? (Spanish language sites are ok)
Are they dependable? ARe there any drawbacks to using one of these sites?

(If those with experience think that a phone call is a better way to book, would you mind sharing one of those 20-20-type codes that allow inexpensive calls to Europe from the US? )

Many thanks!

Try http://www.bookatable.com/es
I use them all over Europe and in NYC. Looks like they have many restaurants in Barcelona.
Enjoy your trip!

Thanks, but I do not see the restaurants I want to visit on that site..

Anyone else have experience with the sites I mentioned above, or others?

I see those names all the time. do you have to give credit card info? Most restaurants have an email address also, don't they'

I use eltenedor.es a lot here in Madrid. You don´t have to prepay or give your credit card, and I haven´t had problems with booking or cancellations or late minute changes.
Well, if you want to make a change, you have to cancel and rebook, but it usually works fine.
I have seen that you can book Neichel or Cinq Sentits via eltenedor.es , so it looks quite OK

Bye, Cova

Thanks to you both!

I found some restaurants with e-mail addresses but there was at least one e-mail that I could not find. As long as Cova has used ElTenedor.es in Madrid, that should be fine for me..

We never use booking sites. We either use the restaurants own website to make our reservations, or call them for reservations. You can also have your hotel make the reservations. Sometimes that can be a little more impressive, depending on the hotel.

If might also take a look at www.restaurantesbarcelona.com/eng/restaurants/ to see if the restaurants you're interested in are listed.

Thanks, Robert. I will be staying in an apartment so do not have the luxury of a hotel concierge to make the bookings. I do use a popular booking site here in New York, Open Table, which is very reliable, but I have no experience with any site other than that one, or in any city other than New York.

I will take a look at the site you mention..thanks again.

Ekscrunchy, in case you are interested, I have used Opentable in London and works fine. For Paris I have used the mother site of eltenedor.es , lafourchette.com . French friends recommnended it to me, and after my Paris experiences, I gave it a go in Madrid and I am quite happy.
Mind you, it depends on the places, it is not really good for Bilbao, for example, it doesn´t have many of the interesting places ...

Bye, Cova

We booked a restaurant (Paco Meralgo) through BCNRestaurantes.com

http://www.bcnrestaurantes.com/eng

To be more exact, we selected date/time, submitted reservation request, a few hours later we received an e-mail from BCNRestaurantes that our preferred time was not available and an alternative was proposed (online that time "appeared" available, but I don't know to which degree these things are updated in real time). So I wouldn't necessarily try this service for last minute booking, as I don't think I'd be able to rely on online availability, but certainly for the next day I'd use them again.

Since this thread resurfaced, I will report that I successfully used eltenedor.es for 2 restaurant bookings on a recent trip to Madrid.

But at least one Madrid restaurant that I sampled this past October could only be booked by phone.

But sometimes restaurants reservations request is not taken easily . They take it for waiting .it's quite upsetting for some people.

Albert, did you happen to notice that this post was three years old?

I will also add that some very nice restaurants via eltenedor.es offer up to 50% discount when booking through that site. In Valencia, RIFF, wit a Michelin star, offers that a la carte most days. Restaurante ANA, a nice place, also has a 30-40% discount when booked through this site. So it is worth checking out.