El Gringo, El Grosso

Our meal in El Gringo tonight was a car smash. The place looked great and was very busy for a Monday eve and though service was very slow due to the amount of diners the initial chips and dips were a nice touch. My starter (filled potato skins) was very bland and soggy (obviously microwaved) though my childrens chicken breast was fine. I ordered the burrito which the menu said came with Mexican rice, sour cream, refried beans, guacamole etc. It came (soggy and microwaved) with no cream or beans and with very greasy rice. The real horror however was my husband's 'Mexican chicken'. He initially said it was quite nice though not exactly Mexican and it was a sizeable piece of breast. However, I was horrified to notice as he was eating it that the centre was completely raw- pink, fleshy, cold raw! He had been planning to just ignore it and leave it but I was disgusted and felt quite ill so we mentioned it to the waitress who, wait for it, "It's ok. This is the EU, it's fine. You won't get food poisoning here." My husband asked to speak to the manager. She came over eventually after attending to a few bills, tables, seatings etc. Her attitude frankly was appalling. She was extremely defensive without hint of an apology and actually implied that we were after a free meal as my husband had eaten around the raw part. (Obviously he left the raw part when he discovered it!). When he pointed out that this was not the issue and that we were concerned about his health she kept going on and on about not charging us for our food and just charging us for our drinks and how if he was ill she would help with medical bills! When we repeated that the cost of the meal was not the issue she started saying that the reason it was raw was because they had 40 meals to prepare at once and because it had had to be cooked to order and it was a large breast. She said they don't normally cook the food fresh to order but have it cooked in advance and that this was how my husband's food had come to be raw in the middle. We paid the 22 euro for our drinks and left without drinking them as we couldn't wait to leave. We will needless to say not be returning and hope not to have Salmonella by morning.

That's El Gringo in Castillo, Duquesa (Manilva). Shame - thought it might be nice to try. Won't be bothering now!

PS  Hope you're feeling ok!!

There does seem to be an unusually high concentration of crap restaurants in the Manilva area for some reason.  You can usually get a good meal pretty much anywhere you go in Spain.

RUBBISH Manilva area has a great number of fantastic places to eat from the basic to high quality .The only way to find out is to try yourself       Do not tar the area due to odd bad experience

I would hardly call it the "odd bad experience".  I've been to dozens of places in the area.  They're not all bad though, just most of them!.  There's a handful of decent tapas bars, a great place (Quiros) that does a great menu del dia, and there's a couple of really good but expensive seafood places in Castillo.

I think in Manilva you need to be really careful where you go.  No wonder most of the places close down within months.