This was one of THE worst experiences in my entire eating existence. I am not exaggerating. Where do I start? It is all in the name- ‘Beef Bar’ I am sure you are all familiar with this chain. I thoroughly love their site in Hong Kong which has one star and the beef (Which is what you come for) is excellent there. Why don’t we go to the site in Milan to see how it is? It cannot be that bad surely. Wow, this is a night that I will not forget for all the wrong reasons you can think of. I was so shocked and appalled that I forgot to take a picture of the most important evidence, the steak, so unfortunately you will have to imagine how awful it was in your mind. I will do my best to bring the story to light.
The night started off quite well, we went for an aperitif next door within The Portrait Hotel, there was a live band, nice drinks flowing and when we were ready, we hopped over to Beef Bar to eat. We sat down and ordered, and all was ok at this point, yet we did not know what was about to happen… I am going to outline this very fact- This place should not be allowed to get their hands on quality pieces of meat. They do not know how to cook it nor prepare it. Clueless… Considering the name of the restaurant this is criminal.
I started with a Bao bun as I was a little bit hungry, this was the best thing we ate the entire night.
The obvious thing to do is order steak and when it arrives, it is to them charred and to us burned on the crust outside and is blue almost raw in the middle. It was a big piece of meat so just grilling it on both sides will not do, it needs to go into an oven to cook evenly. We complained to the waiter, and they offered to make another one, fair enough perhaps it was just a poor misjudgment, so we said ok, bring us another. But low and behold the same thing happens again, raw steak not cooked enough with acrid burning on the outside. Disgusting… What is wrong with this restaurant? It is like they never cooked a steak in their lives. We complain again and the Italian maitre d’hôtel appears to be agitated. What makes this even worse is that when I started to tell him this was unacceptable, he completely blocks me out and refrains to talk to the man at the table instead. This got my back up and unfortunately, I could not get through to him, he was not even looking at me when I made the complaint. Clearly stuck in the olden days… His face was blowing up with steam and even at this point he did not believe that the steak was bad, bloody unbelievable. He was challenging us. Everything was getting heated, and we should not have had to spend this amount of time stating the obvious. Eventually having to push, the steak was cancelled out on the bill, and we left. His attitude was horrible and shocking, customer service does not exist here. And even worse, women are not allowed to talk it seems. Do not trust this restaurant with your best beef, they wasted two excellent cuts of meat that had to go directly into the bin. We left starving and angry, night ruined.
