Restaurante Mateos — Restaurant in Almazán

If you're looking for a nice family lunch in Almazán, don't go to this place. I've given it one star because "Not even One" isn't an option. One of the worst restaurants I've had the misfortune ever to eat in, and that's saying something. As a travelling salesman, I eat in about 200 restaurants a year, and some have been dreadful.

This place is probably OK if you think that Torreznos are the apogee of Spanish cuisine. So if you want to eat deep-fried fat chunks of greasy bacon and nothing else, you'll be fine.

You'll notice the intense stench of fried yuck as soon as you enter the 1970s-themed dining room.

You get the picture when you see the formica tables are dressed with red paper tablecloths and clumsily-cut lumps of the cheapest white bread upon no side plates, all jammed so close together that you get thumped every time staff or clients shuffle behind you to get to another table. And just to prove it's really tacky, the walls are decorated with deer skulls and antlers.

The food is ghastly: the worst kind of downmarket Castilian fare - for God's sake don't call this "gastronomy" or "cuisine" - e.g. tinned peas fried with knobbly offcuts of ham followed by a lump of meat that has been placed on a grill and turned over then plonked on a plate. Or two fried eggs (wow!) with 11 chips and three slices of the cheapest supermarket ham, for the modest price of 9 euros. Entrecotes (white veal, not red beef) were served with a tiny helping of chips, so we ordered an extra side portion for the three teenagers to share, which was so small it could have fitted on a coffee saucer. No vegetarian options. No chicken either: what the menu describes as "Cordon Bleu" is made of veal, so it's probably more like a partial Cachopo. "Salad" consists of manky bits of Iceberg lettuce with half a tomato, half a boiled egg (grey rings included), half a tin of white asparagus tips and half a tin of tuna. Seriously. Dessert - one of our party ordered fresh fruit. This was an apple. An apple; on a plate; just like that. And this claims to be a restaurant. Two others had ice cream: two ping-pong-sized balls of ice cream... which were served on a flat main-course plate! Clearly no idea how to serve ice cream.

This brings me to the prices - 14 euros for a Menu del Dia, and 18 euros for an entrecote - worthy of a decent restaurant in Madrid or Barcelona. Five of our party endured this option, the other seven went à la carte, to the tune of 35 euros each. The staff, apart from a young waiter who was actually doing his best, had no basic good manners, or absolutely any idea how to serve people or food. The two late-middle-aged waitresses constantly shouted at each other and their clients across the dining room as if this were a provincial street market, and undecorously plonked food, plastic 1.5-litre bottles of mineral water and mismatch cutlery on the table as if it were a punishment, and removed plates whether or not we had finished with them.

The toilets were flooded with filth, and when this was politely pointed out, the staff's attitude was "None of our business, we don't have time".

This is a smelly-old shouty-fritanga provincial "Bareto", dishing up overpriced grub which is so bad it doesn't even make the grade as "mediocre food", to apparently undiscerning customers with unsophisticated palates and low expectations of service and food.

Outcome: 326 euros for 12 people (five of whom had Menu del Día and one of whom had fried eggs), 20 August 2022. A...

Reservamos como última opción al volver de un viaje tras estar otros sitios de la zonas ya completos.

Fueron inicialmente muy amables al indicar que teníamos un perro pequeñito y que dejaron estar en un salón aledaño. La amabilidad acabó aquí.

No tenían torreznos y pedimos menús del día y de carta. La comida no es nada del otro mundo, es simplemente mala. ¿Cómo es posible que la carrillada tenga más 'hueso" que carne? ¿Hueso? ¿La carrillada? De primero también tenían patata"s" con costilla"s". Los remarco porque era una costilla por plato en una sopa dónde flotaba una patata. Todo en singular. Y por no hablar del pollo en salsa. La salsa se quedó por el camino y la pechuga de pollo parece que también.

No fue el único problema, sino que estaban desbordados (si se puede llevar desbordado a tener una camarera para todo). Tardaron cuarenta minutos en poneros los segundos platos aparte de 20 minutos para esperar empezar a comer. Parecía un episodio de "Pesadilla en la cocina" de Chicote: descoordinación, el cocinero llevando platos sin saber en qué mesa tocaba, en la mesa de al lado recibiendo primeros y segundos a la vez mientras nosotros llevamos 40 minutos esperando el segundo... Y viendo comen alguna mesa de volver en una ensalada... Fíjate que es difícil que una ensalada pueda estar mal...

Siempre me hace gracia los sitios en los que no pides postre en vez de café pero te cobran el café y no te devuelven la parte proporcional del postre del menú.

Nos pidieron disculpas al salir. No volveremos nunca y evidentemente jamás lo...

Al llegar allí, el camarero nos comunicó que en terraza no servían. Como verán tiene dos puertas y para una persona con discapacidad es, hasta peligroso subir por los dos escalones que tienen ambas puertas. Una de ellas podía haber tenido una rampa para personas con movilidad reducida, pero no. Y es de Ley haberla tenido, pero claro...no va a obligarles el Ayuntamiento, irán a almorzar allí. Como he leído en otra reseña, efectivamente, al ser del pueblo, parece que te atienden mejor y hasta e incluso te sacan los pedidos a la terraza. Lo vimos por nosotros mismos. Sorprendido, indignado y avergonzado de que pese a mi discapacidad, no hubieran tenido ningún tipo de miramiento. Tienen suerte que no me hubiese caído al bajar esos escalones tan peligrosos para...