My sister decided to treat me to a dinner on Saturday night and purchased the Wowcher deal for 2 to dine at El Toro. What a HUGE disappointment for what should have been a lovely Saturday night meal. The actual restaurant is outdated in terms of decor – along the lines of one of those tacky theme restaurants you get on Costa Fiver etc. and then the food – they might as well have photos of the food they serve on the outside of the restaurant as it's that type of tacky restaurant. Although, to be honest, no point in having pictures of their food on display as they probably wouldn't get any customers hence the reason they're constantly offering promotions on Groupon and Wowcher as otherwise they'd have even less people going there than at present!
Now onto the food…the presentation, the quality, the cooking – ALL of it was dire!! We tried the chorizo starter and the empanadas but the chorizo sausage was like eating a 3 inch bullet and almost damaged my teeth, the beef empanadas would have been ok had they not overcooked the pastry and as for the steak…I almost cried when it arrived poorly presented on the plate. We paid extra for the large steak hoping that whilst the rest of the food had been poor to moderate, that they would at least get the steak right as they describe themselves as being an Argentine Steakhouse…not so!! My sister asked for her steak to be medium and it arrived full of blood and was very fatty and as for my steak, I asked for it to be rare and it did arrive rare but it was quite possibly the fattiest ribeye I have ever been served. I know my steaks, I’m half Brazilian and I've also travelled extensively in Argentina so know my steaks well. For those that don't know, ribeye is one of the fattier cuts as it's from the forerib but any good butcher will take the ribeye roll from the forerib and then when butchering the meat will remove gristle, most external fat (not the delicious fat marbling though) and the muscle. Not at this place though. They obviously use a low grade beef as my overpriced ribeye was 50% fat – I'm not even exaggerating. Even the waiting staff (who were nice) agreed when they saw the steak when I complained about it. The manager said that the reason it was so fatty was because I asked for the steak to be rare…well, I suppose if I wanted the steak cremated some of the fat may have dissolved but who wants to eat a cremated steak and also there was a lot of gristle and muscle still on the steak which no amount of deep frying/grilling will get rid off. I have eaten at 100's of restaurants and 90% of the time will order a steak. If you're a steak aficionado please avoid this place at all costs. Waste of money, ruined Saturday night and it's most definitely not an Argentinian steak house. If you want to experience a proper ribeye steak, you can go to Cote restaurant chain (good price, good quality/grade steak) or if you want to splurge out then head to Gaucho where you can order your steak blue/practically mooing regardless of cut as they only use the finest grade Argentinian steak.
Also, the side dishes are extortionately priced as well. The chips are of the cheap frozen Iceland variety and the spinach was £4.50 for 2 mouthfuls which was served on a side plate and swimming in water. They also charged an additional 45p for a teaspoon of mustard which was shocking…save your money – go elsewhere!!!