Guachinche El Cordero — Restaurant in San Miguel de Abona

Ok, I've been putting off writing this for a few weeks, I don't enjoy writing reviews like this.

First of all the setting is great, the location is charming, and walking in I had really high hopes, we saw lots of meat hanging in the kitchen behind glass, and the place gave off a 'meateater' vibe, mimicking good grill/barbecue places. After a short queue we were shown to our table. (We had a reservation, but it was ignored, probably because they were not full yet... I guess...)

This IS a tourist trap. A place which draws you in, and has no intention of making you a returning customer... maybe this is normal on a remote island with thousands of tourists each year.

What is odd is that the staff doesn't really talk any language besides Spanish, or at least the waiters we talked to, or tried to talk to. Which is odd for a 'tourist trap'. And by 'trap' I do not mean anything nefarious, just in a sense, that everything is nice until you are seated, and locked in to pay. Once they know they have your money, they just don't care anymore.

We got some decent aperitif food, some sauces and buns, without asking... (In the end they billed this too.)

Again the mistake was in assuming that this is a grill or 'meateater' place. I ordered some pork ribs, and the family a mixed grill platter. I was hoping for some fall-of-the-bones ribs, fatty and juicy, with some sauce, maybe with a tropical twist. What I received was the hardest piece of animal product I was ever served in my life. It was burnt and raw at the same time, while still managing to be under seasoned and served completely dry. And cold! I imagine that cavemen encountering fire for the first time made better ribs than this. The meat was harder than the soles of my hiking boots. On the grill platter the chicken breast was so dry that I am sure that we found more succulent rocks at the peak of El Teide the day before. The meat which I suppose was meant to be the beef steak on the platter was just a messy knot of fat and cartilage. The Pork loin was ok. A bit tough, but edible at least. The least I can say is that I was very disappointed. Our plane was leaving in 3 hours, so we just wrote it off as a loss, and just paid and left... I was trying to look at other tables, to see if food was as bad there as at us, and at first I thought that the waiters were carrying off half full plates, because the portions were so big... well in hindsight this was probably not the case... And don't tell me that this is an authentic way to cook ribs there locally... We ate amazing food, and meats during our stay, now and also 14 years ago. Making 'bad grill' is NOT a Spanish thing. The reviews are also deceptive here... so many 5 star reviews (which I cannot imagine why...), but still there is a quite big bump in 1 star reviews... Well anyway, here is my 1 star review. The food we were served was laughably bad.Maybe it was a bad day for them (short staff, bad batch of meat??), but it made it a bad day for me too. If they knew/saw the ribs and the grill was that bad on that day, then they should have said that it is off the menu. ** If you must visit here, and have a look at the beautyful banana groves, and the comically fat papaya eating goats in the back of the restaurant, then: Stay away from the meat! Maybe try...

My friends offer me to visit this “restaurant” (its not even restaurant) for my birthday meal as they hear some good recommendations and we decided to go. Four of us visited this place on 21st of April, we arrived at 20:30 ( you can check the cameras) . I have no idea how this place still got 4.3 stars and google call it “ restaurant” with such a poor service :( . We took a sit and waitress name Lucia came to serve us ( avoid her please) , she asked us what we gonna DRINK and when I asked her what non alcoholic coctails she can offer , she said they dont have them but she can offer me lemon sorbet. I said okey ( as I didnt know that its not a coctail , its a dessert! ) 🤦🏻‍♀️ , so when she brought it , I look at it and start googling what is a sorbet and I find out its a dessert and on menu its also in dessert section, not on drink section , right? ( so why Lucia offering customer dessert as a drink? ) ( so disappointed she cant even see the difference between coctails ( drinks ) and dessert . She should offer drinks not desserts. She didnt even apologise for such a thing, what a rude woman. Later on Lucia dropped plates near to me , I think it was in purpose and didnt even apologise for this. Horrible waitress. Another thing : after Ive asked to cancel sorbet Ive asked another waitress which served us after Lucia to bring me peach juice instead of sorbet and he brought me pineapple, minor issue but still… On the top of it when we finish our starter , another waitress ( dont remember the name) took our dirty plates away coz they need to bring our main dishes, they gave me my partners dirty knife and fork to make me eat my main dish…wow,wow , absolutely shocking and how can you call this poor place “restaurant “ when you get such a service? I think in Macdonalds is better service than in this place…. When u bring new dishes, with every serving , you need to bring new set of fork and knife. My friends get only forks to eat meat! Haha… so when I call a guy to say that he gave me my partners dirty set , he took it but didnt even apologise ( such a poor Canarian maners…) And the last thing when we have to pay our bill we asked Lucia to spread the bill half and half but seems like she doesnt know how to do it , so she dropped the bill on the table and gone to serve anothet table, without helping us to translate the dishes we order so it took as time to figure out the names of dishes and when she is back Ive asked her to translate to me some names of the dishes to see what did we order , but seems like she didnt want to help with that and pretended she doesnt understand what Im saying to her , but when I remind her that in normal restaurant waitresses dont offer deserts to have as a drink 😂, how come she start arguing with me in English and blaming me that I said yes, but I said yes because she said its a coctail drink, but she didnt say its a desert . ( no Apologise again) . Thank you for this serves to ruin my birthday mood :)) Not bad food and service so so poor, waitresses has no maners and kind of rude . Now we are so dissappointed and I will put on my facebook post to warn my followers and friends who is coming for holidays to make sure they avoid this place and waitress...

The restaurant looks very nice, but unfortunately the overall experience was disappointing.

When the food and drinks arrived, the staff simply placed everything in one corner of the table, leaving us to pass the dishes hand to hand. We ordered chocos a la plancha troceados/ cuttlefish, but they had no taste at all. I even told the server that the cuttlefish felt more boiled than grilled and had no flavor, yet he never came back and nothing was done about it. I’ve had this dish in several restaurants in Tenerife and it was always delicious, but here it was completely bland. Even though I didn’t eat the cuttlefish, no one offered to replace it with something else, which would have been the least they could do.

The other dishes were no better. The tuna salad came with tuna that was dry, and the pork steak was also dry, with a piece that was tough and full of gristle.

The service throughout the evening only made things worse. We had three different servers: the first took our food order, was not at all friendly, and never returned to the table. The second is the one I told about the cuttlefish, but he also never came back and nothing was resolved. Only after we had finished eating did a third server finally ask if everything was okay. I explained the issue again, and his response was simply, “I am sorry, do you want dessert or should I bring the check?” It was only after I insisted that our experience was bad and that something should be done about my dish that he eventually returned to say the item had been removed from the bill.

Even then, we waited a long time for the check, but it never came. In the end, we had to stand up, go to the bar, and track down the first server just to pay.

Overall, it is a beautiful looking restaurant, but the food was bland and poorly prepared, and the service was disorganized, unfriendly, and careless. The setting promises much, but the actual dining experience left a lot to be desired.

To add to the disappointment, the plantation area where you sit is closed off, so you can only take pictures rather than enjoy the surroundings...