|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
It’s been four months since Spanish restaurant Telefèric Barcelona filed a lawsuit alleging that Macarena, a new Spanish restaurant in Palo Alto, stole recipes and confidential information from the company. Two months after being served, Macarena opened its doors in downtown Palo Alto. Locally, Telefèric has restaurants in Palo Alto and Los Gatos.
In a memorandum filed in February in Santa Clara County’s Superior Court of California, Macarena argues that Telefèric hit them with a lawsuit to prevent Macarena owners David Linares and Elizabet Reviriego “from establishing a competing restaurant in Palo Alto,” and states that “Merely pointing out that Spanish restaurants have menus with similar dishes, typical dishes of the Spanish cuisine, is not evidence of misappropriation of trade secrets; no trade secrets are needed to make a menu with paella, croquetas, and jamon serrano.”
I decided to do a side-by-side comparison of Telefèric and Macarena’s most similar-sounding dishes to see if I could see and taste the difference between them. My plan was to place takeout orders at both restaurants at the same time (to make sure food from both was at similar freshness levels), but ran into a slight hiccup upon learning Macarena does not offer takeout orders. My work-around? Order food as a dine-in customer at Macarena but quickly pack up everything to go.
Looking at Telefèric and Macarena’s menus, they’re surprisingly different considering both offer the same style of cuisine at a similar price point. For tapas, Telefèric offers oysters, paella bombs and tuna tacos. Macarena has dishes like deconstructed Spanish tortilla, slow-cooked beef sandwich and braised oxtail.
Mains are very different as well, with Telefèric offering shrimp and bacon ravioli alongside Spanish meatballs, and Macarena serving grilled presa Iberica and catch of the day with Iberico ham sauce. Even the paellas have differing ingredients, with Telefèric’s including both lobster and smoked New York steak paella and Macarena offering paella featuring Iberian pork and octopus-squid.
I ordered the three dishes that I thought sounded most similar between the two restaurants: ham croquetas/croquetas de jamon, pan con tomate and paella negra.
Visually, the croquetas looked quite different: Telefèric’s were cylindrical, with crispy ham on top and served with aioli ($9), whereas Macarena’s were spherical, not served with any sauce or garnish and slightly larger than Telefèric’s ($10).
The textures and flavors of the restaurants’ croquetas were also quite different: The inside of Telefèric’s croquetas had a lot more texture than Macarena’s, as the potato was chunkier and the croqueta was packed with comparatively larger pieces of ham. The interior of Macarena’s croqueta was very smooth, runny and oozy, with less ham than Telefèric’s. The overall flavor was also substantially different – Telefèric’s was a lot more savory, while Macarena’s had a slightly sweet taste.
Comparing the restaurants’ pan con tomate, the two dishes again looked nothing alike and didn’t taste similar. Telefèric’s pan con tomate featured slices of a larger loaf and had chorizo butter ($9), whereas Macarena’s was made on halved flauta bread and featured extra virgin olive oil ($10).
In terms of paella, Telefèric’s program is a bit more built out than Macarena’s, which is to be expected considering Telefèric has been around since 1992 and Macarena is just 2 months old. When I ordered to go from Telefèric, I was given the option of three different paella sizes, and for a $15 refundable deposit I could order it with the paella pan. I selected the paella for one, which was $26 (without the pan), but if I ordered for two, it would be $46, which is $2 less than Macarena’s paella for two. Macarena does not offer different sizes of paella.
Telefèric and Macarena’s most similar-sounding paella, paella negra, surprisingly had very different ingredients. Telefèric’s featured gulf shrimp, tiny scallops, octopus, clams and garlic chips. Macarena had small shrimp pieces, massive scallops, squid, peas and asparagus. Additionally, the flavor of the rice itself was different between the two dishes, with Macarena’s rice featuring a much stronger, fishier squid ink flavor.
After my taste test, I do not believe that Macarena stole recipes from Telefèric, as the restaurants’ three most-similar sounding dishes looked and tasted extremely different.
Macarena, 420 Ramona St., Palo Alto; 650-407-2897, Instagram: @macarena.group. Open Monday to Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Telefèric, 855 El Camino Real #130, Palo Alto; 408-827-4162, Instagram: @telefericbarcelona. Open Monday to Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. to 9:15 p.m., Thursday and Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 10:15 p.m., Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10:15 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9:15 p.m.
Joan Lane, trailblazing volunteer and Stanford’s go-to for ‘sticky problems,' dies at 97March 25, 2026 3:23 pm
I admire your inventiveness and initiative in researching this but your conclusion is unsupported by your evidence. You can argue Macarena did not use Teleferic’s recipes when they made your order, but that doesn’t prove they did not steal them. For all you know, the previous day they could have made identical dishes to Teleferic’s. Even if they have never (yet) use the recipes, they still could have stolen them.
A more interesting question is which restaurant provided the better food?