Café Central — Restaurant in Madrid

I had visited the Café Central several times and always enjoyed the evenings there. Returning to Madrid after quite some time last March, I was looking forward reviving the good memories and booked a table for three for concert and dinner. Reserving required advance payment for both. The third friend had an emergency that evening and could not join us. It is requested to be there 30 min in advance of the concert, we arrived 35 minutes before, things seemed prepared, staff stood around the bar chatting. What we experienced then - you coldn't make it up. One of the waiters immediately approached us telling we were 5 min too early and threw us out, we should wait outside the door - leaving us speechless, especially since it was pretty cold and heavily raining. After 3 minutes he came back and "allowed" us to enter, but only to stay at the entrance. When he came back two minutes later to admit us we immediately told him that the third person will not be able to join, and he said no problem, we would be granted a voucher for the amount already paid. When paying the drinks after the concert I asked for the voucher and was told it would be sent by email. An email never arrived. I tried to contact them several times via the email address given on the website, but always received error messages. Finally, I used the contact form available on the website - no surprise I never received an answer. I would have certain understanding that the concert fee is not reimbursed, yet I also had paid for food that was never served. In summary - the waiter first felt the need to "educate" us for being there 5 minutes early, and then just told us an untrue voucher-story to avoid any discussion. Sadly, this whole experience of incredible ignorance, arrogance and rudeness towards their paying guests overwrites my good memories. Needless to say that we will never ever again consider setting foot...

Disgusting and sad experience, I feel like this place is a hustle to some degree. Service was the worst that we experienced in our seven days in spain. We had better food at Streetside cafes and much smaller scale businesses. How in the world could this place stay in business? With poor service and poor quality of food we certainly won't be back and as we tell our International friends who travel to Madrid regularly and other European destinations please highlight this as a place NOT TO GO! I even saw a waiter tell a group to please be quiet when they simply did a cheers to celebrate their special occasion. There was a small performance by a jazz singer going on but the group was not being loud at all. As we looked up it was not uncommon to see tables looking for their server and clearly frustrated by having their arm and hand up in the air to try and get their servers attention. This was a completely wasted night for us fortunately we went somewhere else spent lots of money tipped our great server magnificently and closed out our evening with an enjoyable experience away...

The server will STEAL your money. Worst place ever!! We came here today around 7:40pm. The only male server who works outside took our check 10€ cash with 2.45€ coins which total was 12.45€. Then he came out with the 10€ cash check after 5 mins, and he said we didn't pay the 2.45€. Obviously, he took the 2.45€ and wanted to rip us off. We asked his boss, he said he was the one in charge. Then he tried to say he would call the police, and which he didn't even we said yeah call the police. Later he called another person who said she is the boss, we were talking to her and we said, "do you really think we would still sit here if we didn't pay enough? And he saw the money when we gave to him, why he didn't say anything?" Then she just left with him, without facing us or any explanation. Just left like this???? We live here in Madrid now, come on you really want to do this?????

Nota/Note to the owner: you should check your employee schedule and see who was working outside this afternoon. This tall and thin guy is a theft, and moreover he will piss off...