El Coto — Restaurant in Newcastle upon Tyne

I decided to go for lunch to take advantage of the Eat Out to Help Out offer which is 50% off your food & drinks bill up to £10 per person (not including alcohol). I had a look online to find out what restaurants were taking part & El Coto was one of them. When they gave me the bill, I was shocked to see they were trying to charge me full price. I had to ask the waitress & show her the page I seen they were offering this deal. She made excuses & they re-calculated it. I am disgusted that this restaurant would charge me full price & then claim 50% back from the government. They also did not ask for my contact details for check & trace covid-19. If you are going to advertise an offer then stick to your end of the deal & stop trying to rip customers off. I would have left a large tip for the staff but was so annoyed that I didn't leave much. Food was average & brought out one tapas late after I had finished all my other food.

IN RESPONSE TO YOUR REPLY: I was charged full price for tortilla paisana which I was told was not available in the 3 tapas for £11.95 offer. The government are willing to pay 50% off any food & drinks so it shouldn't make any difference to you what I order. You are obviously planning on claiming the money from the government even when you are not offering the customer 50% discount. You are lying and I am going...

Really disappointing experience. Mixed salad at £6.65 was nothing more than a handful of mixed salad leaves from a bag you'd get in a supermarket. Tomatoes were ice cold. Keeping tomatoes in a fridge degrades their flavour and these certainly had none. Practically a whole white onion piled on top. Would normally expect red onion in a dish like this. Actually laughing that I paid for it but I had a theatre show to get to and the young man serving was clearly out of his depth. Tomate aliñado was, if I'm being generous, at least one whole cold tomato. Again flavourless. The Champiñones al vino blanco turned up ten minutes after we had finished eating so returned them. Not sure why they took 40 minutes in total to arrive when there were only three other tables in the whole restaurant, and only arrived after we pointed out we hadn't received them.

All in all the flavours were severely lacking. Either we came when the usual chef was on leave or other reviewers have never been to Spain. Spanish people would be mortified by...

So.. I actually hate doing anything like this and to be honest this is the first time ever I have complained about food as I just say “yeh it’s fine”.. but my husband and I were the only ones in the restaurant around 4:15pm.. we ordered off the set menu.. bread olives cheese and ham came out first which were lovely then.. the rest of the tapas arrived.. the figs wrapped in Parma-ham were cremated.. the chicken dish was very dry.. the Spanish sausage wasn’t cooked.. the mushroom potato croquettes weird tasting and meatballs I can make better myself.. I like to go to restaurants where I can’t make food the same.. however I was very disappointed.. the food should have been on point with us being the only ones in restaurant.. The staff were really polite and very helpful.. they offered us free desert and coffee but still my bill was around £76 for a teatime meal.. I have always considered this restaurant one of my favourites which...