Beach Restaurant, The

Jane (29 September 2008)

We booked for an evening meal at the Beach Restaurant. The location was beautiful and the interior of the building was very pleasing. The food was good but there were too many flavours thrown together for it to be excellent. Also, the sea bass portions were miniscule - a quarter of a fish per meal! Vegetables were included with the main course, but when they arrived they consisted of a small bowl of potatoes and a small bowl of carrots between six people. It was embarrassing having to ask for more and irritating having to wait for them.

The menu was very expensive, but this would be acceptable if we had experienced fine dining. What also lets the restaurant down is the slow and not very welcoming service, the lack of table cloths, paper napkins rather than linen ones and toilets, which looked as if they had not been cleaned since the morning. The Beach Restaurant operates as a cafe during the day and I think the owner should decide to make up his mind what he wants it to be. Our party felt as if we were paying London prices to sit in an up-market cafe.

Natalie (31 August 2007)

I was looking forward to a fantastic evening with a great meal in a great location but unfortunately that was not the case. You can't fault the location, and the sunset was amazing, however the food could only be described as mediocre, and the service as atrocious. On arriving at the restaurant, my partner and I were asked if we'd like to enjoy a drink in the bay window prior to our meal. After twenty minutes of waiting we had to flag down a passing waiter to actually give our drinks order. We eventually made it to our table and ordered. The starters arrived and all was going swimmingly until we deigned to ask for an additional bread roll. This simple request was greeted with a grunt by the particular staff member who then proceeded to plonk one bread roll in the basket, presumably for the two of us to share. The main courses arrived and the food was OK however, again I was less than pleased when at the end of the course, the waiting staff actually piled all of the plates up on top of mine, directly in front of me, in order to clear away.

Dessert was even less successful again. We had ordered chocolate torte, but we received what resembled a chocolate fudge cake. We asked the waitress politely if it would be possible to have something else as what we had received was not what we had expected and the chef was promptly sent our way to enquire very loudly, what was wrong with his chocolate torte. We eventually got something else. The final straw was, having to get up from the table to go and get sugar for the coffee as by this point the waiting staff were too busy cleaning cutlery for the next day to notice that paying customers might actually require some service. All in all, it was a real shame as what could have been a fantastic meal in a fantastic location, was spoilt by poor service standards. Another point to note is that at the same time as serving the a la carte meal in the restaurant, beach style snacks were available on the terrace outside. The priority service-wise was clearly with the customers out on the terrace with the snack bar style menu and the waiting staff dressed in line with the dress code of these customers, i.e. flip flops etc. When paying the sort of prices that The Beach charge, you don't expect to be served by someone in shorts and have people still in beachwear traipsing in and out of the restaurant to use the toilets etc. The Beach could so easily get it right with little effort. I have to say though that we certainly won't be going back in a hurry for an evening meal.