€5.50 full English sparks Benidorm bar row after customer leaves one-star review

A €5.50 full English breakfast might not sound like the sort of thing that would ruin anyone’s holiday, but one Benidorm customer thought it was expensive enough to leave a one-star review. His complaint has since turned into a very public row after the owner of The Corner Bar responded online, defended what was on the plate and told him, rather bluntly, to “have a day off”.

The breakfast in question costs €5.50 and includes a fairly substantial list of traditional fry-up favourites. The customer, Peter Jones, nevertheless warned others about the price, saying he believed a full English could be found elsewhere in Benidorm for €4.50 or less.

Customer takes issue with €5.50 breakfast

Jones wrote in his review that people should be careful about the OAP discounts, particularly at breakfast, pointing to the €5.50 price and claiming that a full English could be found elsewhere for €4.50 (£3.86) or less. That €4.50 figure was Jones’s own comparison rather than a price established by The Corner Bar, so it is not evidence that an identical breakfast is generally available elsewhere for that amount.

The review caught the attention of Ashley, who runs the British-owned bar with her family. Rather than quietly accepting the criticism, she shared the complaint on Facebook and questioned whether the price alone justified a one-star rating.

She said customers were perfectly entitled not to like the food, service or even the people running the business, but objected to the suggestion that customers needed to be careful about the bar’s prices. The response quickly attracted hundreds of comments, turning one unhappy breakfast review into a much bigger discussion among people familiar with the bar.

What does €5.50 actually get you?

Ashley used the opportunity to spell out exactly what customers receive for the €5.50. The Corner Bar’s No4 breakfast contains one portion of English bacon, one Irish sausage, black pudding, a fried egg, toast made with Roberts bread, Heinz beans, fresh mushrooms and tinned tomatoes. It is also cooked fresh to order, either by Ashley herself or by two British cooks who, according to her, have been working at The Corner Bar for years. Her message to Jones was unmistakable: “Have a day off, Peter!”

The argument is particularly interesting in a resort where British-style breakfasts are hardly difficult to find. Benidorm has long had a market for inexpensive British food, from everything from traditional Sunday lunches to enormous breakfast challenges.

Customers rush to defend the bar

Once Ashley’s response appeared online, customers began coming to the bar’s defence. Several people who had eaten the €5.50 breakfast defended the price, with one customer saying the No4 offered good value. Another was less diplomatic, telling Jones that if he wanted to pay €4.50 he could do so, but suggesting that the cheaper breakfast would not be as good. Someone else simply pointed out that the difference between the two prices was only €1.

Ashley later thanked customers for backing the business, admitting that reviews can be difficult to read after a long day when you are running a small family business. She explained that The Corner Bar is a family business with five working members of staff alongside the owners and said they do their best to keep everything going.

The reaction also gives some context to the single one-star review. The Corner Bar has 1,170 Google reviews with an average rating of 4.5 out of five, while its TripAdvisor rating stands at 4.2 from 585 reviews. Michelle Baker, who has lived in Benidorm for more than 40 years, shared the story on her Benidormforever Facebook page and said: “LOVE that Ashley from The Corner Bar Benidorm called this chap out… there’s just no pleasing some people!”

Benidorm’s breakfast price debate

There is clearly no shortage of competition for anyone looking for a fry-up in Benidorm. EWN has previously reported on on Uncle Ron’s €9 Belly Buster breakfast challenge, which comes with four eggs, four sausages, four rashers of bacon, hash browns, toast, fried bread, beans, mushrooms and tomatoes.

That is obviously a very different proposition from The Corner Bar’s No4, but it shows just how varied the breakfast market can be in the resort. In this case, however, the argument was never really about whether €5.50 is the cheapest breakfast in Benidorm.

It came down to whether a customer considered the price enough of a problem to give a family-run bar one star, and whether the owner was prepared to let that criticism pass without answering back. Judging by the hundreds of people who joined the conversation, Ashley was certainly not the only person with an opinion.