Earlier this week was invited to dinner by new friends on the island to this Steakhouse in Boracay. Was told this is a Swiss Steakhouse, with many German and Austrian inspired dishes on the menu. The location is right in the middle of the commercial hub of Station 2 near D'Mall on White Beach.
Walking up the stairs from the beach, patrons will be greeted by attentive staff to be seated at their tables. The sides were average, we shared the buttered vegetables, salads, and sides. While most people at the table had ordered the tenderloin steak, I had opted for the T-Bone steak, medium rare. While others at the table had quite enjoyed their tenderloin, I did not have an opportunity to try a piece, so this review is based purely on the T-Bone I had ordered, it must have been the chewiest T-Bone I've ever had in my life, the cut was awful. The buttered sauces for the steak was decent, though it took ages for me to even cut a piece off to put in my mouth, and no matter how many chews the steak is just a big lump in my mouth that I would need to swallow with the help from my glass of wine.
And the wine, the staff would start pouring from the 2nd bottle of wine we had ordered into the new glass of wine for some friends at the table who weren't even halfway finished with your first glass. Additionally, the waitress had poured the 2nd bottle into the wrong glass that had wine from our 1st bottle, so now it's a weird mix. Though the waitress was apologetic, she initially made no attempt to correct the mistake, just seemed nervous and this lead some of us to believe this particular restaurant punishes their staff by docking mistakes from their pay which was confirmed by staff later, and we told her not to worry. We brought the mistake pour later with the Italian/Swiss manager and told him not to punish the staff, just to be aware of the mistake. While I understand they probably couldn't have opened another of this particular bottle to pour for just 1 glass, they could have offered a complimentary glass from their house wine. If true in this instance, I don't believe in the concept of restaurants levying punitive salary deductions from staff where it's common in Asia, it generally makes the service less responsive to mistakes, etc.
Improvements need to be made with responsiveness to service mistakes, and though the other cuts of steaks like tenderloin seem to be good, if the establishment is unable to source decent quality T-Bone, they should take it off their menu or make it unavailable. It could also be poor quality control in the kitchen with checks on the quality of the steak. read more
