Villa Maria Steakhouse — Restaurant in Amsterdam

One of the most dissapointing experiences in a while! Normaly you can trust google reviews but this place does not deserve that much stars. First of all, yes the exterior of the place says it all! An LED-lit "open sign", tasteless flames of a grill on the screens... we were standing outside and hesitated for 5min to go in there.... but you know the saying "never judge a book by its cover" and as the reviews said that the meat was outstanding, we thought we give it a try... from that moment on: one bad experience after another:

It smelled like moth balls when we entered. The interior design was horrible (the pictures on the wall, the fake flowers, those unhygenic fur-couches, bad decoration, the lights in the shopwindow)... the bread was a simple roll, cut in half.... like really cheap bread you buy in bulk for a few cents in a supermarket, the salad had no dressing at all! It was just dry salat without anything that has flavour! The decoration on the plate was a joke! Instead of serving the king praws solely and tasteful smth you can eat they used an orange, cut it in half and wrapped it in tinfoil so that they can poke some skewers in there which were holding up the king praws. + that is also a waste of food because nobody will eat the orange and I guess they throw it away later. Btw the king praws where burnt, dry and really hard to peel. The meat was good but on the verge of being raw! Side dishes where also not the best. Loveless decoration, no flavour, no use of salt. I was joking with my friend about the candle on the table because it was a graveyard candle!!! They coul not even be botherd to buy a nice candl for their tables. It was one of the most horrible dining experiences I had in years!!! And unfortunatrly the google reviews are sooo far off from reality! I regret that we had to spend nearly 90 euros there. It's a tourist trap... and we were caught because every other nice restaurant was packed and it was hour first night in amsterdam and we were...

The good: definitely the food. Steak (Bife de Chorizo) was made to perfection! The chicken fillet was also wonderful. Meat empanadas were very good, this is a fried variation which can be found in Argentina, although I personally prefer them oven-baked. Classic Argentinian music playing, giving the right atmosphere. The bad: where is the Chimichurri?! Having been raised to Argentinian parents, I know that no steak is served without Chimichurri. Ever. Period. Also, the Chorizo doesn't resemble a real Argentinian Chorizo. It was OK, I guess, but lacked authenticity. Same goes for the salad we got as a side dish. I know this is The Netherlands, but Argentinian salad dressing is vegetable oil and vinegar, not garlic mayo. Sorry. The ugly: upon entering the restaurant, you are welcomed by a strong moldy odor, that to this minute I'm not sure how we managed to stay there and have dinner. Something must be done with that ASAP. The restaurant decor seems too old and a renovation is well due.

All in all, our experience was positive, but if you're looking for a real Argentinian experience, you better look elsewhere. If all you care about is mouthwatering steaks, then this...

I went there looking for some nice food, an nice atmosphere and friendly staff and I really ended up getting none of that.

I got poor loin, which was extremely dry, tough and overall pretty bad and not even fillings. The chips were okay. Crunchy but not as much as I'd like, and soft on the inside.

The meal where you get wraps with a meat/veg board however has two different hairs in the two different meals. Not only where there hairs but they, at first, refused to give any kind of discount at the end of the meal and also tried to blame us for the hair being in there (all of us had very curly hair and this was a straight one) meaning the food was bad, and when it wasn't that bad (as in the wraps with beef/chicken) it had hairs in it and the management was more than willing to blame us for that instead of looking at other factors that could have caused that.

Overall a really disappointing service and I would not come back here and would personally avoid this place for all...