El Bálamu — Restaurant in Llanes

This evening my wife (who is Chinese) and I (British Male) visited El Balamu on the off chance of availability due to the good reviews on Google. We arrived and they found that they had a cancellation last minute. We thought we were in luck and indeed the food was lovely that we ate in 30 minutes in the end and left because of the following.

Unfortunately we were served by a hostile waiter who was rude and belittling to my wife. He spoke to me in English on arrival, and so we reverted to English, but when we sat down and my wife asked for two glasses of white wine, he forced her to say it again in Spanish on the spot, trying to embarrass her and repeating it slowly with her as if she was a child. He then made multiple pointed remarks about being able to speak Spanish and that we shouldn’t just expect him to speak English and said everything in Spanish to us before reverting to English after.

Note that he was already speaking to us in English from the start - we can get by and have in many Spanish restaurants through our trip where they spoke no English and we used the broken Spanish we have. We always try to speak Spanish and the language of where we are visiting wherever we go. We love different cultures and my wife speaks several languages. Tonight however was unacceptable. He made her cry in the restaurant and yet still continued making his point. Perhaps notably he did not do the same to me, just to her…I wonder why?

Asturias and the people here have been lovely so far. They have been welcoming and kind to us since being here for the past week. This was the first encounter with a small minded and rude man with poor service skills - he was the 40-50+ male waiter working on Saturday 24th evening. The other waiters in the restaurant were lovely and we spoke to them after this waiter didn’t return to our table again, likely after he saw my wife was upset.

We were hoping to go back to the restaurant. But we will never return to a place where someone can be so rude to their customers. It is not what I would expect of Asturias given how nice everyone has been so far and I have never encountered anything like it in my life. I wanted to say something in the restaurant but my wife didn’t want to make a big deal. In my upbringing we should always make a big deal when someone is being a bully. So here I am, on Google Reviews to let everyone who looks to visit the restaurant know.

I wonder if he would learn Chinese and speak the language if he...

I would strongly discourage anyone to eat in this restaurant as my husband and I got a severe food poisoning from eating here. The fish was recommended to us by the staff, and this was the only meal we shared that day. We both got really sick about 3 hours later, throwing up the fish and leaving no doubt what was the cause of the problem.

The poisoning was so severe we were taken by the ambulance to the local hospital, where I was put on an IV drip. Being 5 months pregnant, we were terrified we might lose our baby.

Once we recovered we went to the restaurant to file a complaint in hope they will inspect the food they serve. The manager did give us the form to write the complaint, but were not at all interested in investigating what went wrong with the food. She tried to blame the food poisoning on the water or something else we have eaten. We showed all the proof from the hospital, but the manager (and her colleague) showed absolutely no concern or sympathy about what happened.

We underhand that we might have been unlucky and maybe it was a single contaminated fish - and this is forgivable. What is not forgivable is the response we got. We were shocked by how little they seemed to care about a serious incident caused by their food.

If you do decide to eat there - good luck, I hope their experience is...

Todos los años vamos un fin de semana a Llanes y el Balamu lo teníamos como un sitio de referencia donde cenar. Como somos conscientes de que es complicado en verano una mesa, me preocupo de llamar con la suficiente antelación. Este año llamé varias veces sin éxito fuera de los horarios de comida, otro día llamé y me dijeron que no podían atenderme que estaban en horario de comida y por fin en otro intento conseguí reservar para el viernes a las 22 horas . Como repito que no era la primera vez me extrañó que esa tarde no llamasen para confirmar l mesa. La cuestión es que llegando puntuales ( solemos hacerlo) a las 21.55 nos encontramos bastante gente esperando y al preguntar por nuestra mesa nos dicen que era a las 21.Respondo amablemente que es imposible y lo sé básicamente porque NUNCA reservo para cenar a las 21 en ningún sitio . Pues la chica que nos atendió sin ninguna dote comercial y de educación nos achaca el error a nosotros y me dice que nos han llamado para confirmar y no hemos cogido a lo que le respondo que no tengo ninguna llamada de ellos . Me dice que llaman desde un teléfono móvil lo cual me sorprende porque su teléfono en su web y al que llamas para reservar es un fijo por lo que aunque llamaron desde ese móvil no cogí porque ya no cojo ningún teléfono móvil que no conozco o me suene. La cuestión es que nos dice que nos pongamos donde podamos en la barra y que ya cuando atiendan a la gente que va con reserva ( como si yo no la tuviese) intentarían darnos una mesa. En ningún momento por su cabeza aparentemente aceptaba la posibilidad de que el error fuese de ellos. Lo pensamos y viendo el ambiente decidimos irnos porque el trato recibido no era de recibo. Si hubiera tratado de corregir el error de otro modo quizás esperaríamos. Decir que cenamos en otro lugar de alta calidad bogavante y pescado fresquisimo y sin tanto estrés y altanería .Es una pena que nos olvidemos que la soberbia es un pecado capital y como tal algún día será castigado. Si ya el año pasado cenando calidad precio nos pareció caro ahora ya prohibido y sitio a no...