Arriba Tapas y Tequila

Came here tonight for dinner with my cousin and his girlfriend. The main reasons I’m giving the rating that I am is because of the beautiful view, décor, and ambiance.
One of my pet peeves is when rooftops with beautiful views take advantage of the fact that they know they will get a solid amount of customers no matter what prices they charge or what the quality of their food is, but I’ll give Arriba the benefit of the doubt.
The walk to this restaurant/​Hotel Americano involve a lot of parks, and somewhat shady areas.
When you first take the elevator up to this rooftop restaurant, you come to this strange area where on two sides there’s a gorgeous rooftop view of Manhattan, and then there’s a very odd entrance to the actual restaurant. In the door to the restaurant, you wonder if that’s actually how you were supposed to walk in because you have to essentially step over some barrier in the doorway to get inside, and there isn’t a hostess podium or anything so you awkwardly try to find some staff to seat you.
There are really nice tables (fairly low seating), on couches and other modern chairs. My favorite part, however, was the beautiful window they had with two booths in front of it that made it look like you were looking at a gorgeous printed/​modern designed photo of the city.
The three of us were vegetarian, so we essentially had all the vegetarian items on the menu. The staff didn’t really seem to know what the restaurant offered a lot of the time. Since I don’t drink, we asked the waiter and waitress what their non-​alcoholic drink options were such as Coke and Sprite, and they literally only repeated «Coke» and «Sprite» back to us as an answer to the question but sounding confused in the process.
A few complaints about the menu:
(1) it wasn’t clear for people with diet restrictions to maneuver, or for people who weren’t well versed on Spanish tapas to understand (did not mark vegetarian items or explain ingredients).
(2) there were no clear descriptions of the dishes. It made a lot of inaccurate assumptions of the audience.
(3) did not list non-​alcoholic drink options
These things would’ve been okay if the staff could talk about the menu like they knew it, but they couldn’t.
I thought the pricing was pretty fair for a place like this though.
So the food was okay, but not on the better side of the tapas I’ve had. We got:
(1) the patatas bravas — which were pretty standard and unimpressive. The aioli also had an aftertaste.
(2) the salad — which I actually really enjoyed. They had orange slices inside and it was pretty delicious. But in many ways also pretty standard and not something exceptionally special.
(3) the peppers — they were pretty good and was reminiscent of okra, but had a nice kick to them at the end. Not too spicy and the spice didn’t linger either. Since the menu wasn’t descriptive, I thought they would be stuffed. I also thought this because when I asked, the waiter told me that they were stuffed with onions but clearly he was just making that up.
(4) bread and oil — it was a bit tough and hard to chew.
(5) Spanish omelette — this was pretty yummy but was lacking salt for me. Beautifully plated though.
(6) churros — the actual churro tasted delicious, but the sauces weren’t sweet enough and essentially tasted like nothing. I also thought they would’ve been yummier if they were warm but the churros were served hot and the sauces tasted like they were taken straight out of the fridge. They had dulce de leche, jam, and chocolate sauce. I tried all of them but I decided the churro tasted better alone and the sauces were ruining it for me.
They opened the window at one point, and it got pretty cold because it was a cold day outside. But they were nice about closing the windows when we asked them to. The manager was also really nice. At one point he came to our table thinking we were a different table and confusing who we were then left very awkwardly — but before we left he offered to take photos of us in the outdoor area and actually took really nice ones. He was also very patient when we wanted a redo.
Oh yeah, the lighting in the restaurant is pretty dark, but it was appropriate for the tone of the place and worked well.
Also, they have a bathroom that has a big «MENS» sign on it, but it’s apparently unisex and you can only see that when you look at the physical door. I went in there to wash my hands and my cousin thought I was walking out of the men’s room because of the big sign he had an excellent view of.
They’re fairly new and clearly trying to figure out their bearings still, but I would definitely come back for the view and ambiance, not so much for the food or drinks. Next time I would want to sit in one of those booths by the cool window. I feel like that’s PRIME city seating.

Overpriced everything ($ 17 for a small margarita). Average food. Weird vibe.
Don’t expect to have a conversation here because it’s too loud. It smelled really bad when we walked in and I wasn’t able to recover once the smell dissipated.
Lovely view but you can get that in a lot of other places. Would not recommend.