Mesón El Monasterio — Restaurant in Los Realejos

The look, decore, and feel of the place is amazing. Highlights are certainly the occasional duck or chickens making their way across the paths as you walk around; great cultural feel. Parking is great.

Service - being new to the restaurant, we asked the wait staff for her recommendations. She was clearly not interested in helping and referred us to the menu. Trying again with a 'what do people enjoy here', we got the 'everything', and a rude look. Not what I expected.

On to the food - Started w/ a sticky table, but got that cleaned. Asked for a bottle of Water w/ Gas; bottle was noticeably not clean we the water was being poured out. We decided to go without the water. During our meal, I took a moment to remove the used cigarette butt that was extinguished in the rock next to the table - just off putting.

Finally, onto the main meal. beef stroganoff like dish was well seasoned - came hot. Nice. The steak was not cooked as well as it could have been, but still reasonable. A third way through the stroganoff, we pulled a long black hair from the rice/meat. Tossing the hair quickly to the ground, we decided to hold off on the remaining of the dish and shared the steak.

The straw that broke the camel's back - the very same waitstaff could not have been more cold as we described the three issues. She quickly rebutted with a 'if I can't see the hair, I can not refund the dish'. But she did offer to change the water bottle. . . .

We made it clear we were providing her feedback, and didn't want anything free. Her only response was we should have saved the hair, and it's not her problem we did not. WOW.

We paid the check and moved on. If we return it would be to see the chickens and buy the bread from the small store next door, that was...

Decided to have a ride out, we have been here on numerous occasions and the food has been really nice, we decided to eat in the restaurant next to the shop on the same level. This time we decided to have the meat fondue which we saw someone have last time we were there. When the fondue arrived it looked amazing, you get 8 different dips and chicken and beef which is raw and you dip them in what should be red hot oil, the first piece of meat was nice but it went down hill from there the oil was cooling and the meat was just sitting in warm oil, we asked one guy and said oh it's cooking don't worry, then 15 mins later we complained to another lady who didn't seem to be bothered and said it's cooking what's the problem, the meat was sitting in warm oil and not cooking, eventually a guy came who knew what he was doing, they kept the cap on where the flame was, he said why is this still on, they took it away and fetched a hotter one back and the cap was kept off and it cooked it as it should of done, the problem was all we could taste after then was meat cooked in what tasted like old oil, so it put us off eating it. It was a shame as the first meat was lovely. One of the staff was really apologetic where as the lady couldn't really care. So if you order the fondue make sure that where the flame is there is nothing...

I would still recommend anyone who has not been to El Monasterio to visit once during the day (lunch time) to walk the beautiful gardens and monasteries as it also boosts nice views from its elevated location up in La Vera. A taxi from Puerto de la Cruz or La Paz will cost you around €12 - one way. If the sun is out at lunch time, it’s really nice to sit on the terrace and have a drink and maybe a simple tapa.

However the dinner menu and food in general has gone down in quality immensely in the past 10 years. We have been visiting for over 30 years and would traditionally go with the family at least once between Christmas and New Years for a big group dinner (10-15 people). The place was known for its quality meat, but over the last five years the ordered cuts of meat were stringy and not cooked as ordered (medium rare was completely cooked through and difficult to chew). Most people were very disappointed with their meals this time around (meat, fish, vegetarians). Almost no options for vegetarians (one salad which was okay and cheese). We have decided to break the family dinner tradition after five years of disappointing experiences and might just stick to the occasional lunch time wine and tapa if we wanted to visit...