Friends Lounge Bar & Restaurant — Restaurant in Arona

Been to friends many times, last year we must have been to friends around three or four times during our ten day stay in tenerife and was one of our favourite places to go, great staff.. great food and great service, i could not fault it. This year we came again for ten days and went twice friends during our ten day stay, both visits were the worst meals we have had there, the service was non existent.. had to ask every time for our drinks, food and bill, not just once several times.. yesterday was our last day staying and we thought everyone has a bad day so thought we wont hold a grudge and give it another shot and make it our last meal enjoyable, it started off by arriving 7.40pm for dinner and was asked if we reserved which had never been a problem before and had a wait of around ten mins, which is fine people were eating/drinking.. one of the waiters tried his best to get us a table for myself and my partner and four year old daughter, we then sat down and after five mins, cutlery arrived.. 35mins later no-one had asked us what drinks we want, this time came up to 8:05 and we were about to leave so I asked the waiter when will someone be taking our order for drinks/food he then said the boss will take your order them walked off, the manager arrived to take our order and then drinks arrived at 8.25, food then didn’t arrive for another 40 mins (3 steaks & bread & butter) when it arrived my daughters steak was massively undercooked (rare) asked for medium/well, mine was overcooked and missing fries & sauce, and no bread & butter. I asked the waiter that walked past to rectify and when asked about the sauce tried to tell me it didn't come with sauce and then said that they didn't do it so I had to show him on the menu, we were made to feel like we were in the wrong when over half the order was incorrect! When we asked for the bill we had to do this twice as no one bothered to actually get the bill just too busy stood about chatting to themselves! Not the same service or standards as 2023...

We visited Friends on June 29th at 7pm, as a party of 10 (7 adults, 1 child and 2 toddlers) we pre booked the table requesting 2 high chairs. When we were seated at our table, not one member of staff thought to bring us a high chair for my 1 year old instead we had to go get one ourselves. We gave our drinks order and approximately 20 minutes later we gave our food order. We waited 20 minutes for our starters - garlic bread and deep fried cheese, which arrived cold, when we told the waiter that the cheese was not properly cooked he snatched the plates off the table and said nothing, 10 minutes later the same food arrived back to us it was clear it had been just thrown back in the fryer for a few minutes. At 8.40pm we began to wonder why all the tables around us had their main courses even though they arrived after we did so we asked a waitress to check if there was an issue - we saw her speak to the chef but she never returned to our table, in fact she walked past our table with someone else's food. At 8.50pm we had enough and decided with 3 very tired children it was time to leave, as soon as we stood up our so called waiter came running over to see what was going on so we explained but honestly he didn't seem to care until who I could only assume was the manager/owner arrived over to speak with us but unfortunately it was too little to late. The staff at friends are inadequate for the size of restaurant that it is, if you are unable to serve customers correctly don't fill your restaurant to capacity and just hope for the best. We also asked if it was possible to turn the music down a small bit as the place was so full we couldn't hear each other and we were laughed at. The last night of our holiday was a huge let down because of this restaurant and none of us...

After reading the google reviews of this restaurant we came here as a family. This is an honest review of our experience tonight.

Firstly myself and my partner had tapas and it was amazing we thoroughly enjoyed. However,

The other two groups of my family all ordered battered chicken, when the food arrived it was just normal plain chicken breast so we asked waitress what had happened, she told us the kitchen made a mistake so they would be replaced which is fine. Mistakes happen. 20 minutes later the chicken arrived and it looked really nice. One of the chickens was for a child and luckily he noticed prior to eating as it was pink inside, completely raw. It hadn’t been cooked just battered. It was cold to the touch and bright pink. Once everyone else finished their meal we explained to the waiter that it was raw and his face showed the horror in what he saw. After this he argued directly in front of us with chefs and other waiters whilst they all stared at us.

I asked a waiter to order a drink to which he replied “what”. He was very rude! After we had told them about the raw food not one person came to the table. All of the plates and empty glasses were left and no one asked us about the bill or anymore drinks. When we asked for the bill we were made to wait a further 15 minutes. Thankfully the raw meal was removed from it but no apology was made, they took payment and walked away.

If you are a family looking for a nice meal together, go else where. This was an awful experience on our last evening here in Tenerife and thankfully a lucky one. Most people don’t check their food when eating but thankfully my nephew is fussy with food.

Further update all of us had an upset stomach early hours of this morning. Clearly something...