We visited on Saturday evening, our first night in Tenerife and were very excited to visit CHAR, being very big foodies from London.
Our welcome was fantastic, Manuel our waiter was fantastic, the sommelier was fantastic, everything about our starter (prawns) was fantastic. We were...having a very lovely evening.
My wife is pregnant so we needed her steak completely well done. 2 waiters were very much on the same page and agreed to butterfly her fillet steak so it was completely cooked through.
The steaks arrived. My steak was fantastic. A superb cut of dry aged Galician meat on the bone, beautifully cooked and presented.
My wife’s arrived, not butterflied and still pink. It was cooked medium-well done to start with.
We sent it back. Apologies from the waiters, no problem at all.
It came back 5 mins later, same piece not butterflied and still pink in areas. We sent it back and asked for a fresh piece.
It came 10 mins later, a new piece now butterflied, but cooked medium. Pretty pink this time.
This time I got slightly annoyed. We are in a top class steak restaurant yet the head chef clearly had issues cooking a steak the whole way through. What baffled us more was that the whole kitchen is open and on display to customers and the head chef was arguing with the waiters in-front of us as if no error had been made. As if the steak was cooked through and we were all mad. It was still clearly pink.
The steak came back, this time charred (which is fine), and 95% cooked through with one piece pink. My wife ate most of her steak and it was fine.
In any normal scenario my wife would eat a nice pink piece of meat, but it was a very clear agenda at the start of the meal, yet it couldn’t be executed by an experienced chef. It was a bit embarrassing how it was handled, and the attitude from the chef on show was unacceptable. I was very close to walking out and paying nothing for the meal had it not even for Manuel.
The chef tried to make up for it by sending out another thin steak about 10 mins later when we were finishing up. This was much nicer but far too late. My advice would be to own your mistakes and come over to our table to personally apologise for such a poor mistake (4 times). That obviously didn’t happen.
Manuel brought us a complimentary dessert which was greatly appreciated and my wife’s steak was also removed from the bill.
Not the end of the world, but sometimes you are defined by how you handle mistakes. This was handled abysmally, and on show to the customers of the restaurant. I am writing this review as hopefully it’s a learning experience for everyone.
Thanks for the rest of the staff that are clearly doing a great job and are passionate about their food/wine and restaurant as a whole. I would recommend visiting, but we wouldn’t return sadlyMore
