Vinoteca Bistro & Tapas

Closed, with notice of changed locks on door. Heard goods things about this place, hope it gets cleared up.

Valentine’s weekend was way too much for this place. By 6:30 on Saturday they were out of almost everything and by 8pm I heard muttering from the staff that they were about to walk out. Our dirty plates sat on our table throughout the meal and the flat breads tasted like an entire shaker of salt had been poured on them.
The spinach empanadas were good as were the meatballs but nothing else comes close to qualify in a larger city.
Very disappointed in this place. I hope the mgmt plans better for holidays in the future but I won’t be back.
The space is very nice and sangrias was good but overall a very bad experience.

Fantastic! If this restaurant was in a larger city it would be packed every night. Seriously. The wine selection is incredible, the proprietor is extremely knowledgeable, and the pours are very generous.
The food. Wonderful. The paella is especially nice, but every dish is excellent.
It’s worth traveling to try this place.

Friendly service. Very tentative. Cheese and spinach empanadas are phenomenal. Warming environment as well as cozy. They have half prices on certain nights. Very cool art. Excellent chocolate trio – perfect size and delicious.

My wife and I came back twice in one day to enjoy the food and wine. The staff where amazing and very respectable reqardless if you are lacking in wine knowledge. The chef’s food is fantastic! My wife and I are from San Antonio, This is one place you definitely want to visit.

Dined in on Friday night. Nice ambiance. Negatives first… Seemed a bit under-​staffed as service was slow and food took a while. They do not serve iced tea… only cokes from a can, water, and wine. Not serving tea and sodas from a can gives the place a sort of transient…“we’re not here for long” feel. Positives… nice menu and really good food. Tasty and fresh flavors present in all five of the dishes we ordered. Upscale desert menu with some prepared table side. I’ll definitely come back because I love
to have options such as this close by… not driving to Austin for this type of restaurant is great. I don’t mind waiting a few more minutes for good, freshly prepared food. Any negatives are growing pains and should be worked out. Try this spot as it deserves to be added to your rotation.

Huge wine selection and wine-​based cocktails.
Can’t say that I agree that the food is Austin caliber, but it was a-​okay!
Croquetas — nice and salty (yum), I think I was expecting a thinner batter
Empanadas — cheesy + spinach
Paella — rice was under, but the seafood on top was very fresh and tasty
Cute intimate ambiance.

I was really excited when this place first opened up.
The food was good though I wish there were more options for the tapas. I’ve never been to a tapas restaurant with only 5 or 6 tapas offerings. I also wish there were actual wine pairings with the food.
The last time my husband and I visited I had a wine flight (4 wines) for $ 10, each wine was very tasty. We had a cheese board, which was very generous and tasty. We also had a flatbread which as good but definitely not the best I have had. Lastly we had paella, which honestly I probably wouldn’t order again, I felt like every once in a while I’d get small pieces of shell in my bites.
We finished with bananas foster which was quite delicious and made right at the table.
The atmosphere is some of the best in town, the service was great. Amazing date option in Temple, Texas.
I will continue to check this place out and would recommend it to anyone that has not been.

Great showing — best wine list in town, one of the only fine dining establishments around. Killer new menu: Mexican-​Euro fusion focus. Yeah dude, sign me up. The tapas plates and entrées offered a great variety and I will definitely be coming back. Wait, you mean I don’t have to carbo-​load on omega-​6 fried foods and bread, and eat a bunch of terrible meat from feed lots? I’m thankful places like Vinoteca exist… to provide a little bit of worldliness to an otherwise-​sheltered place. Keep it up.

We went here before when they were serving tapas. Everything was super delicious. Very nice atmosphere. this was our 2^nd time coming. Bad service. They served Pinot Noir chilled. Wrong. It took a really long time to get our food. Atmosphere was still good but when you get your bill it just really wasn’t worth it. Sad because I recommended this place to lots of people. Vinoteca, keep trying! Y’all will figure it out!

This place is fairly new, and has the potential to be amazing.
The atmosphere is very intimate/​dark and relaxed which is a change for this area of Texas. We loved the low lit lighting, couches, certain a that could be drawn back, etc. reminded me of places in Austin.
When we arrived our reservation was lost or not taken. Because we had a party of 8 ladies for our monthly ladies dinner I highly doubt my friend forgot to make the reservation, especially since she insisted we try this place and then said she made the reservation. No big deal though, we only had to wait 10 mins or so for our table.
After being seated we waited for 20 minutes for a menu and wine list. Our waitress kept apologizing, saying that they were short on menus. I don’t understand why they didn’t have enough menus, there are only about 15 – 20 tables in the whole place. Finally our party of 8 was given 2 menus.
So after ordering our food, we waited and waited, and waited. Now each of us ordered 2 tapas each to share, and no entrees. None of our food came out at the same time, even though every tapas was a double order. It took them over a span of 2 hours to bring out all of our orders. Our waitress apologized and said that the kitchen was short a cook and she brought us complimentary bread, a cheese and fruit board, and root beer beef ribs. Everything we had was delicious, but seating at a restaurant for 4 hours to have wine and tapas was way to long.
I’m sure that this was just a bad night due to a shortage in kitchen staff, so we’ll definitely try it again in a few months.

Great food and service! It had a wonderful variety of tapas from different cuisines. My personal favorite are the beef empanadas with an authentic chimichurri sauce but close behind are the blistered shishito peppers (pro tip: ask for some extra lemon juice and salt on the side). They have an excellent wine selection from many regions. One thing to add: I wish they had a better by-​the-​glass selection or the ability to taste wines before getting a bottle. Overall impression is a great place for intimate dates and groups. I wouldn’t suggest it for families with children, as it is more of a relaxed atmosphere.

Austin caliber spot in Temple!
We tried the tapas, shared an entrée and had dessert. The owner was very friendly and since we had never experienced Spanish cuisine helped us choose at least one classic dish.
I apologize in advance because I’m describing the items by what they are and not the menu name
Truffle corn empanadas: owner explained these are a delicacy, it’s corn that was infected by a natural fungus that makes it taste truffle-​like. Apparently a highly sought after item in Europe.
They tasted like– earthy rich corn goodness.
I poured the spicy green sauce on them and ate them up
Size– 2 empanadas
Kangaroo dumplings:(dim sum) Made with actual kangaroo. Seemed like a sausage-​y preparation tasted great especially the sauce. If I wasn’t told it was kangaroo I would have assumed it was pork.
Size: 6 full size dumplings: D (Goza size)
Lamb rice ball things: the rice ended up tasting like breading which was really tasty and different. The salsa was similar to marinara sauce so it was similar to eating a breaded deep fried meatball. Really good
Size: 1 large meatball cut in half (size of fist)
Mediterranean platter: boyfriend really liked this, we ran out of pita bread with at least half our dip still on each little plate which was a bummer cause, though you could eat spoonfuls of it by itself… Not exactly what one wants to do with hummus & taziki lol. Waitress said we could order more bread but it was kind of awkward, how much is extra bread? Lollol
Size: 3 dips about 2 tablespoons each with half as much bread as one would need to eat it all :(((((
Paella: we expected a full size entrée portion which maybe it was for fine dining about the size of a queso skillet filled with rice, clams, shrimp and mussels. The menu said chorizo rice but we miss read it and thought there would be chorizo sausage in it as well. I think the chorizo flavor just wasn’t there for us (we like chorizo :)) the seafood was perfectly cooked but clam and mussels are the main protein so if you aren’t into them –like boyfriend– he ends up eating all the tasty shrimp and I got stuck with the bivalves which I don’t hate, but don’t prefer… Tip don’t share your paella
Size: about a 4 inch dinner plate
Strawberry port cake: the name warns you this is boozey so head that if you don’t like alcohol in your dessert. It had about ½ a shot of port inside it which soaked into a vanilla sponge. The marscapone was mixed with whip cream (I think) so very light, not too sweet. Delicious
Size: cupcake size
Overall: the décor, Spanish guitar music, and friendly owner makes this place a must visit, everything we ate was delicious and new. Understand that tapas means small plates so there will not be Texas sized portions. This is not heavy food, perfect for a night out.
It is also going for fine dining atmosphere which I would agree that it is very high quality and a perfect date location. You could bring your friends or your older kids there’s lots of room for a crowd.
Budget conscious folks tapas & dessert run around $ 8 each and entrees range between
$ 12 – 16 so basically around the same price as a chain restaurant for beautifully presented atmospheric foodie heaven. We left at around $ 59 for two but we eat like savages so there Ya go :))

Very nice addition to downtown Temple. Friendly staff and excellent fare. Unique South American Spanish style décor. Food is clearly from authentic recipes and prepared by a master chef. Great place to gather after work to enjoy some tapas and a glass of wine. All good on this first time visit. Kudos to Katie for fine suggestions.

I came late for lunch, but at 1:55 they still let me and my date in. The ambience is wonderfully relaxing, and the décor is more than inviting. The manager is friendly and made us feel welcome, despite our lateness.
We ordered the Cuban, the Argentinean (empanadas), and fried pickles. All three were excellent! The empanadas were perfectly crispy without being oily, and were of much higher quality than you would probably get from your grandmas kitchen. The fried pickles were so much better than you would expect — crispy, not oily, not overly salty… A perfect side. The Cuban? That is an experience all on its own. Words cannot describe how awesomely delicious it is!!! I will definitely be coming back to try the dinner menu!!!
The espresso and biscotti were also quite yummy :)

I had really high hopes for this new downtown restaurant in Temple. I was glad to see something completely different in Temple. For the last two months or longer I couldn’t wait to try out all the tasty items on the menu.
A few weeks ago for date night, we decided to try out Vinoteca. It was not busy at all when we arrived. I was glad that they allowed you to BYOB «Bring Your Own Bottle» of wine. Since they do not have their alcohol license yet. However, I wasn’t particularly happy that they charged a $ 10 bottle service fee and the server basically only poured one glass of wine and put it on ice. I am perfectly capable of opening my own bottle of wine and pouring it myself… Thank You. I felt the $ 10 charge was unnecessary, especially for not receiving much service from our server. It took a very long time for her to come back around and check on us the entire time we were there.
But I was still very excited to try out the menu. I ordered the beef empanadas since others said they were delicious and a traditional family recipe. They were just ok… I have had empanadas in the past and was expecting more flavor. We ordered the NY strip steak with Chipotle Butter and fries. I don’t believe its on the menu online). We requested the steak as rare but the server came back and said they could not do rare, only medium?! And that’s how the chef preferred that type of steak to be cooked. We couldn’t believe that we couldn’t get our steak cooked to order! So of course when the steak came out and we tried it… it was overcooked and tough, not tender at all! Very disappointing! We also did not get the chipotle butter but when we saw another person get their steak with the butter and mentioned it to our server… she said «oh, huh… maybe it just melted». There was no butter on our steak what so ever and how rude is that for a server to insult us like we don’t know whether or not chipotle butter was on our steak. You could definitely notice it on the other customers steak. And ours was dry. The hand-​cut fries were literally so greasy they were inedible.
We told the server we weren’t very happy but she only apologized. She did not attempt to get the manager to talk to us or even offer to comp us for any of the food which we did not even eat! $ 50 later we left still hungry searching for another place to get food and some good service. Good customer service is number one for me. Unfortunately, we will not be back to this restaurant.

Had a GREAT time here last Saturday evening with my girlfriends. I was really suprised to see the place empty at 7pm on a Saturday night, but it seemed to pick up a little by the time we left around 8:30/9.
We got great service and I loved the fact that it’s BYOB right now with only $ 10 for bottle fees. The chef also was trying out dishes and sent us some to try out which was super nice and we really appreciated. He also came out and introduced himself, which rarely happens and was a nice treat.
We started off with the cheese and salume board, which was pretty good. I’d suggest adding a jam or preserve spread on the side as well as some crackers. The two pieces of bread were delicious but not enough for the amount of cheese. However, the pickled cucumbers were absolutely fantastic.
We then ordered the empanadas and potstickers which were also very good. The hawaiian sliders were surprisingly fantastic so don’t get scared off by spam as an ingredient and give it a try. The new yorker crostini was also very yummy. Stuffed mushrooms were great as a side dish.
The karaage chicken (East signature dish) was very good! I loved the sauce on the chicken and there’s PLENTY to share so it’s a great option.
As for dessert, we got the bananas foster (which they do tableside), the death by chocolate crème (my favorite), the lemon pannacotta and the nutty cannolis.
Overall a great experience and great ambiance to the place. I really liked the staff and the fact that everything in the restaurant (chairs, plates) were mis-​matched. We’ll be back for sure!

Awesome new spot in Temple! We sampled quite a bit of the menu in our first visit. We got a lot of menu items and shared them with our group.
We had:
Texas Cheese Board
Beef Empanadas (amazing!)
Carpaccio (delish!)
All of the Four latitudes dishes (my favs were the mussels and the pork rib pibil)
My husband ordered the Ruben and I had a bite, it was mouth watering!
For dessert I had the cappuccino with biscotti, my son had a chocolate mousse inside of a chocolate mold and husband had Crema Catalina. I want my dessert for my birthday! It was heaven in my mouth! The boys loved their desserts but we didn’t share much. ;)
I loved the ambience and the waitstaff was amazing! We got to meet the wife of the owner, she had a beautiful accent and was very sweet! We will definitely be back!

Just had dinner there. An unpretentious place that delivers what they promise on food. True tapas tradition — a place to hole up and enjoy some great wine— try the mussels or the fava bean crostini. Service — impeccable! Ambiance– spot on!
What a welcome oasis for casual dining in Central Texas!

Fantastic experience here tonight! Empanadas are family recipe delicious, the Virginia ham, beef carpaccio, the rueben tapa selections were all so very good.
I loved the eclectic atmosphere, Guernica meets Napa mural and all of the staff were fantastic.