Hacienda Patagonica

Hacienda Patagonica is an Argentine grill and tapas restaurant at the end of Parliament Lane, an alley off Main Street, tucked behind another restaurant and easy to miss. It holds 3.4 on Tripadvisor from 129 reviews and 3.9 on Google from 533, for an Index of 3.80. The reviews were re-read on 6 September 2026 and the newest is from 2 September.

The recent Google reviews are the kindest it has had. A German visitor in September called the food super and the service very friendly; a Slovak couple in August nearly failed to find it, then found the owner kind and the food quick and tasty; and through spring and summer 2026 reviewers praise the mixed grill that defeats them, the best provoleta in Gibraltar, the best tapas, lager in a frozen glass, and a Rioja Crianza at £18 that one reviewer could not believe. The skirt steak is the dish one repeat visitor tells everyone to order.

The Tripadvisor side is bleaker and the complaints have a consistent shape. A July 2026 diner found every dish they asked for unavailable and called it the worst meal of the trip; a party of six the same month, one of them Argentine, say cuts from the supermixed grill never arrived and the single waitress gave the worst service any of them had known; a Spanish table waited an hour and a quarter for a parrillada. Older reviews describe a waiter promising mussels to get a table and then withdrawing them.

The bill is the thread that has not gone away. A May 2026 family were quoted around 72 euros and paid 110, with two items priced higher on the bill than the menu and a chocolate and £5 offered in compensation; earlier reviewers found items they never had, missing items they did, and charges for olives, sauce sachets and salsa put down unasked. One reviewer copied the hours from the wall, noon to 22:30 Sunday to Thursday and to 23:00 at weekends, and another found it still serving at nine when much of town had shut. Service is often in Spanish only.

Come for a late Argentine steak or a meat platter when you have found the alley, and read the bill before paying; refuse the olives if you do not want to pay for them. On the reviews the kitchen can be very good and the paperwork can be very bad, and which you get seems to depend on the night. Nobody from Gibraltar Index has eaten here; this write-up is drawn from the reviews.