Restaurante Café Mediterráneo — Restaurant in La Fortuna

Really do not understand the high reviews of this place. If you have any knowledge of the Italian kitchen this is not the place for you. We ordered a pizza 4 formaggi and that was nothing more than a pizza margarita. Jpon asking why there was no blue cheese on the pizza the waiter said they don’t have blue cheese and that it’s also does not say it has blue cheese on the menu. After that the lady/owner (?) of the place comes over with the menu to ‘prove’ to us that it does not say it had blue cheese. My boyfriend then points out that it says gorgonzola on the menu… so appearantly this place does not know that gorgonzola is a blue cheese? After she shouted something to her staff in spanish the pizza guy comes back after 5 minutes waiting with a tiny little dish with a mini amount of gorgonzola to put on the pizza… really? The pasta carbonara was even worse! Pasta cooked to absolute death and had zero taste. Disgusting uncooked pieces of bacon in it. It surprises me that you can manage to make a pasta with absolute no taste… the dessert we had was the baked nutella bread with icecream. The nutella dough-ball was very heavy but hey, nutella tastes good I guess. But the ice they served with it?! Dis-gus-ting. Completely icy, cristallized and horrible tasting. Could not take more than one bite. 1/10 would not recommend unless you hate good food.

Let me just add something to this review. As the owner seems to take my honest review and feedback quite personal. My review has nothing to do with the people that were serving us that night. I am always respectful to people and for sure people working in the service industry (having worked in several restaurants myself). I understand that ‘good food’ can differ from people to people. But this was just not. good. There is no debating that the pizza 4 formaggi did not have blue cheese. And if you don’t have that, no problem but inform tour clients if they order something with blue cheese. Then the pasta. If your ‘Italian’ chef had tasted the pasta he would have known it was well overdone. There was absolutely no flavor and the bacon clearly was completely translucent and raw. Not pleasant to eat. There was clearly no salt and no eggs used in this dish making it flavorless and very little to do with a real carbonara. Also the ice in the dessert had clearly been defrosted too many times and was completely icy. Don’t believe me? Try for yourself and tell me that it’s good icecream… So you can debate that all you want. The quality of the food is very much below average. And as a restaurant owner I do hope you take a closer look on the quality that comes out of that kitchen. For the rest I wish you all the best with your business and hope you just take this honest review to heart to improve the quality for your guests, as I am assuming that’s what you do it for and not just to take...

SO GOOD! This restaurant was HIGHLY recommended by a friend and we were so glad we made the time to go. We thankfully had an earlier dinner, it quickly became filled by 730 PM dinner so I would recommend going at 6/630 to be seated without a reservation or make one if you want to go later than that. But truly one of the best eating experiences we had during our trip to Costa Rica, we kept comparing our food to the night we had here afterwards LOL. Also, the staff was so kind, professional and attended to us very well - even gave us recommendations. The pricing is in the higher end compared to others in the area but still affordable and equates to the quality of food and service. I had the Supreme Mediterranean pizza (HIGHLY RECOMMEND + more bang for your buck) and my partner had the shrimp/chicken fettuccine alfredo (also very yummy 10/10). They have a brick oven in the back and you can see the chef making the pizzas which was a cool addition to the experience. We had the sangria and passionfruit mojito to drink both delicious, and the passionfruit was so fresh. We shared a brownie with vanilla ice cream for dessert and the brownie was moist and tasty. I think this can be a romantic/celebratory dinner for two or a nice dinner for a family and is definetly a must try if your in...

BE CAUTIOUS- THIS RESTAURANT WILL RIP YOU OFF. We were so excited to go to this restaurant; it was our first stop when we arrived for dinner in La Fortuna. Unfortunately we had the worst service I’ve ever experienced and almost got very ripped off. We made our initial drink and food order and then our server was scarce. He never came back to reorder drinks, and didn’t ask if we wanted refills when dropping off our meal despite both of our drinks being empty. Moreover, they were clearly charging non locals for “water” that was filled in a refillable container, but giving locals tap water for free. Our food was mediocre, but not worth complaining or writing a bad review about. Before our trip, we exchanged our money into usd as we thought most restaurants in Costa Rica preferred this currency. We were supposed to receive $35 USD back in change from our bill, but the server brought $3 worth of Costa Rica colones and argued it was the same. We had to go back and forth with the owner twice for over 20 minutes before he finally agreed to pay us the correct change. In our entire 10 day trip to Costa Rica, we never encountered such a scam for tourists. It’s unfortunate this restaurant has such high reviews despite completely taking advantage of visitors to...