Erre de Ramón Freixa (Hotel Las Américas - Cartagena de Indias) — Restaurant in Cartagena

Let me first start by saying my husband and I made reservations at this restaurant after searching fine dining in Cartagena; we were celebrating our anniversary.

To start, the restaurant is nice, although because they do not enforce dress-code, I would not call this fine dining - the guests beside us, and around us looked like they just came from the Hotel pool; wearing flip-flops and t-shirts.

That said, our experience was somewhat reflective of the laxed enforcement of fine-dining.

To start, the waiter spilled water all over me and the table, and instead of moving us to another table, they figured they would give me a new dry chair, and allow me to eat from a soaked linen tablecloth. What made that worse, is they charged us for the bottle of water they spilled all over me.

Second, we order steak; and for the $200,000 peso price, I would have expected my steak to have been cooked to the medium standard we had requested. It wasn't, and the resolution they offered was to take back the steak, and cook it some more, while our side dishes got cooled waiting.

Now the music, would have been nice to hear it, however it is only available outside on the patio, and not available to guests sitting inside - so that was a disappointment.

Finally, after the poor experience we had, the icing on the cake was them charging us a full-tip, which was included in on our bill.

This is not a fine-dining experience, and to be blunt, was the worst dining experience we had out of the 5 fine-dining restaurants we visited during our anniversary getaway.

At this stage, and after our experience, I would not recommend this restaurant for any occasion. That said, I do hope that owner reads this posting and makes changes, as this restaurant, if better managed, does have potential.

Until...

I live in Cartagena and went to this restaurant for a birthday celebration with 9 people. The restaurant is beautiful as well as the view. However, when the bill came the staff was having issues running our credit cards which took about 30-40 minutes. We finally put the balance (approx $1,000 USC) on my card and everyone could Venmo me. The following day I noticed that the restaurant also charged me $28,813 USC (yes 28 thousand dollars) to my credit card. I notified our party and one other person was also charged the same amount. I went back to the restaurant TWICE and they were in the process of returning the money and they provided a receipt for the return. As of this review it has been (8) days and the money has still not been returned. I filed a dispute with my credit card. Long story short they entered the amounts wrong, knew they did and tried to return the funds without advising the customer. Not sure how a restaurant of this caliber mistakenly charges someone this amount. This is why I give this...

Decent food. Nice decor. Bad service. Wait staff came to the table way too much. They rushed us with ordering. They took plates away before we were finished. They topped up the wine every 2 sips. Wait staff came to our table probably 50 times. That’s not attentive service. It’s annoying. Not the place to go if you want to have an intimate dinner. When we received the bill, we asked about the price of the wine because it was 5 times more than what the menu stated. The waiter didn’t have an answer, so we asked to speak to the manager. He basically told us we were fools for thinking that wine would be as low of a price as the one listed on the menu. No apology. No attempt to correct the problem. If you want to try the food here, get take out and eat in your room. You’ll have a...