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Review of Echaurren Hotel Gastronomico

Good food but very slow and overpriced. Service wa...

Good food but very slow and overpriced. Service was terrible.
We decided to go to Echaurren Tradicion in Aug-20 as we were staying in Ezcaray those days and the restaurant is well known in the area. We booked a table the previous day: lunch for 4 adults and a toddler. The restaurant was well presented and had a good atmosphere. It was relatively busy, but not at full capacity as this was during the Covid pandemic.
As a summary I will say that the food was good, but the experience was negative. We waited 10 minutes to be seated and then about 15 minutes before a waiter was available to order. Let's start with the food: we order three taster menus (made of 6 small dishes each) and then three dishes from a la carte menu (croquetas, dry mountain rice and T steak). The taster menus represented are a selection of contemporary dishes from the restaurant. The problem is that we had to wait about 20 minutes between dishes, which meant that we were hungry and stayed at the restaurant for a total of three hours (2 to 5pm). The dishes ordered outside menu were of mixed quality: the dry rice was excellent but the T-bone steak, although of a generous portion, it wasn't prime reared beef (e.g. Galician "vaca vieja") and it was just fine.
The main problem at the restaurant was the lack of staff and the long waiting times, but also the staff made mistakes that are unforgivable for this type of restaurant: a waiter forgot our initial wine order then after 20 min waiting he came and said the wine wasn't available and so had to pick another bottle which only arrived when we were into the 2nd round of dishes, then when the T-bone steak arrived, the waiter forgot to give us a knife (!!!!).
At the end of the lunch we complained to the Manager, who spent long time to give excuses which I found distasteful. The best comments from him were: "people want everything too fast these days", "we can't find qualified staff at Ezcaray" or "the Michelin starred restaurant is the other one on the back, not us". Great one. The bill was 420, so not so cheap after all! They offered us coffee on the house. At least got that. But now I regret having spent that amount of money and, unfortunately, the family celebration went sour and will never forget it. Never again. There are better places for far less in town.