The Tides Barbados — Restaurant in Holetown

I've been here on 3 previous occasions, and I loved it. On this visit, it was so disappointing. An order was placed for the Sea Medley, including lobster, etc, also a salmon dish . Both meals 10/10 in presentation. Salmon dish included sweet potatoes, of which it was made up of sweet potatoes cubed and mashed. The mashed, I think, had half a bag of sugar; it was impossible to eat. Why would you do that to a sweet potato? The Virgin mojitos were served in the wrong glass. Very tall glasses that you had to lift to below the table to drink. We had to decante the drink into the water glasses to drink comfortably. The table was way too small. 3 menus each, a sanitize bottle bigger than the glasses, plus the needed cutlery a table decorative too. We had to place our phones and purse handbags on the floor to make room. This situation was exacerbated further when the meal commenced. The waitress was attentive, maybe too attentive, asking every 5 minutes if everything's okay. The guests on the next table was heard to say when asked if the food is okay; let me put some in my mouth first. Lol. There was one waitress, black dress, serving / assisting on the floor, and her hair heavily braided to her buttocks. Swinging near tables - beautiful style, but tie your hair up if you are dealing with food. Now my biggest upset for the night, I explained when booking, my allergy. They said no problem. Reminded then on arrival, was to tell our waiter. The rather feisty waiter who took the order, I advised of the MSG allergy, which includes other powder seasons as it can be added as a flavour enhancer, e.g Maggi, flavour enhancer, Heinze, products and not just raw MSG. His reply, we don't do that here; that's for those cooking at home - wellllllll the salmon meal had something with MSG as it caused a reaction, to which we had to leave. The waiter then suggested we took the sweets we ordered home with us. Nicely boxed, we paid and left quickly.' Admittedly, we did not check the box due to the reaction, only to find many hours later that the sweet, which included ice cream, was in the box!!!. I did write to Tides, mostly concerned about their customers' allergy management, its dangerous; I have tried to book other restaurants ' Lacabana, they simple said, we can't guarantee that the products will be MSG free . Customer safety over money. I can respect that. I did not want to put my experience that night on here; give Tides a fair chance for them to reply. Plus, as mentioned, I have been here several times before, ( pre diagnosis ) brilliant food, and service everything you would happily pay for, but they chose to ignore the email and not respond- so we have to raise the bad experience in public. I guess they are waiting for someone with a peanut allergy to have an anaphylaxis, then might consider the...

The Tides is by far our favorite and one of the best restaurants in Barbados! We came here for our anniversary dinner which they were so sweet to add a little decor to our table. We shared all of our dishes in half.

We started at the bar and the bartenders were terrific and friendly! Two delicious cocktails: classic Mojito and rum sour.

Appetizers: 1) red curry, crabcake with shrimp. 2) Caribbean tuna tartare. I would get two of the Caribbean tuna tartars next time for the two of us. It was so refreshing with the watermelon.

Main dishes: 1) catch of the day, which was mahi-mahi. Super tender, perfectly cooked, with zucchini, kale, corn, and potatoes on a cream sauce 2) butterflied Seabass with seasoning, capers, onions, and tomatoes. We got it grilled and it was our absolute favorite dish! Must order!

We’re in the middle of the ocean so we opted for pescatarian dishes, and paired with Chablis and Champagne. You can’t go wrong with that! Really random, but we got bottles of water which were Aqua Panna water from Tuscany, which we love!

Dessert: we asked the waiter what to get and it is chocolate cake. My hunny cannot eat chocolate due to acid reflux so we opted for rum raisin ice cream. Straight forward… nothing out of this world, but the fruit was what we were craving for. (blueberries, gooseberries, strawberry, watermelon.) We were looking for something more refreshing to cleanse the palate since it’s so hot. Maybe we should have gotten the tropical fruit sorbet instead. We received two lemon financiers compliments from the chef, which were delicious too.

The ambience is so romantic, right on the water, watching the sunset. For a fine dining restaurant, we were pleasantly surprised to see so many families with little kids, but they were well-behaved. We’ve been going to a mix of local and touristy spots. Looking around the restaurant, this spot has all tourists, mainly Brits and Americans (that’s us!) and they really know how to pamper us. Our meal was around $670 BBD which is $350ish USD - I say it was a memorable, delicious, and perfect dinner. Looking forward to coming back!!

If you’re booking online, you pre-pay your deposit $250 BBD to your cc but get it back as credit on...

There’s no doubt that it’s a lovely restaurant. Its main asset is its position beside the azure blue sea and we had a ring-side table which was wonderful until the hot sun started to creep in around 3.00pm.

Cocktails quite good although neither we had was sparkling in flavour or originality.

The food is also quite good and plentiful but it’s certainly not cordon bleu or in any way worth a Michelin star.

The staff are quite good too, if a little too impersonal. No obvious maitre d’ running the show.

We weren’t hurried or hassled but neither was I made to feel special despite being my birthday which had been highlighted on booking.

But, and this was my main irritation, when the bill arrived it was $B420 not the $B330 it should have been. When I questioned it, I was shown a Sunday menu which, although identical to the one published on their website, was inexplicably $10 a head more. This, it transpired, was a special Sunday price. And there was no reduction for two instead of three courses, contrary to the website menu which said nothing about a price hike on Sundays.

I held my ground and they then deliberately miscalculated a second time, the manager remarking that most people “just paid” when I asked whether this was not a recurring issue. This comment alone said more to me about the place than anything else.

Eventually they correctly billed me around 25% less than the first bill.

Not a particularly pleasant end to quite a...