La Gondola — Restaurant in Yaiza

First of all folks, this is practically the only non-Italian Italian in town; as in, it is neither owned or run by Italians. There are plenty, and I mean plenty, of Italian owned and run restaurants in Playa Blanca, serving authentic Italian food, some mediocre I grant you, some amazing. This is not one of them. This is a tourist trap restaurant getting away with rubbish quality because they're situated on the seafront, and possibly still subscribing to the belief that tourists don't matter because they won't be back. I'm not a tourist and I will never go back.

Although the night in question happened quite some time back, from reading other reviews on here I see not much has changed in terms of either cleanliness or service.

I had gone with a friend for dinner, and in fact, the starters were not bad, so it seemed a promising start. However, our main courses of 'steak' were totally and utterly unappetising even from the first glance. I can only assume it was of very low quality - thin, with a greyish tinge and not something I'd particularly want to feed to a dog. It wasn't good. But we persevered and asked for condiments to put on the chips (and cover up the disappointment perhaps). It was only AFTER I had doused my food in vinegar that my companion spotted that one of the bottles was absolutely teeming with tiny dead insects. This is what they had brought to our table - I wish I were making this up. At this point we decided we weren't spending €15 of our hard earned cash on this 2nd course, so we called the waiter over and said, politely and quietly, that in no way were we eating this, let alone paying for it.

With barely a further word, our plates were whipped away and the bill for our starters presented to us. And that was that. No apology, no attempt to put things right....nothing. And most tellingly of all, they didn't seem that surprised.

I can think of other very good and reputable Italian restaurants in this town where if even the slightest detail is wrong, they will insist upon replacing your meal. This clearly isn't one of them. Maybe insects in the condiments are completely normal to them, but I'd like to think that this is a basic to check before presenting them to customers. Shoddy service, horrible quality food and a massive let down to the seafront. Save your money and your expectations, and go somewhere where they actually care about...

First a positive they went out their way to set a table up for us but then we felt a bit rushed to order drinks (1 wine ,and 3 cocktails ).The meal was nice but when we asked for 3 more strawberry daiquiri for our second drink as the first one looked and tasted really nice the waiter abruptly said no no more finished and started to walk away as he was saying it so I asked for the bill please.Got the bill put my card and wallet on the table next to it to show that we were ready to pay then waited and waited and waited so I decided to leave it on the table with the rest of my family whilst I used the bathroom and when I came back the waiter was there swiping the card which was ok but he apparently just approached the table in an aggressive way and snatched the card and swiped it in front of the rest of my family with no speaking until I came back then aggressively put the machine on the table pointed to the it and said out load 4 numbers and walked off ,so I took it he now needed me to put my pin number in although the card was already out of the machine to which I've never known with the card not physically inserted at the time.I put my pin in and waited and waited so after a few minutes of being stuck with this machine on the table I took it upon myself to read the option on the machine for receipt and printed it myself took it and walked away. What started as a great evening was marked by very rude service with aggressive tone towards the end and we don't know why.Needless to say no tip left after that and won't...

Greetings.

We have visited this place during lunch hours as we didn't have change to get to our hotel for dinner. As wife suggested: let's grab local food - so we've choosen this place. And here how it Goes.

We entered and didn't waited long to be seated and for order to be taken. However waiter when we started ordering was mostly slient and cut us off replying:" Beverages first" - weird and quite rude behaviour- especially when se didn't Say anything else till we asked for a bill.

We ordered: -Leche y Leche and Beer. Cirka 6€ -pizza Timanfaya 10€ -shrimps in oil 7,50€

As drinks were proper that we have few issues with food. Pizza were good at the beginning with local Cheese (4slices however) but only half of it. .. one part was baked and crusty. Second part was slighty doughy and undercooked... weird experience.

Major flaw came next. Shrimps were not cleaned as it should be, as photo may confirm it. "Poop-vein" of those Tiny creatures were not removed. Sadly few of them was quite "loaded" despite what it is. We needed clear it by ourself. Especially few days before my Wife ordered same food in local bar in Tequise where quality were outstanding.

In general: Behaviour of waiter keep us feeling unwanted as he barely spoke with us (mostly during payment), food was uneven (literally uneven baked), shrimps were lazy preapred without efford to clean obviously visible divestive tract - that make dish bitter and give sandy texture. What's make this place special is place view at...