LA MARINA — Restaurant in Draguignan

The setting of this restaurant is beautiful, beautifully lit up at night, surrounded by small yachts, waterways and pretty apartments with people eating alfresco on their balconies - that's the one star however I'd give zero if I could.

Once seated, blink and your order will be taken, blink again and your food will be in front of you.

For starters we ordered fresh raw salmon with dill and calamari. The salmon wasn't fresh or chilled which meant it had been sat out in the kitchen - we tasted one bite and both agreed it was at least a few days old and had a mushy texture. The calamari was battered - but tasted like the sort of dough you'd expect if you eat a doughnut - the calamari was frozen, not fresh and had little to no taste at all.

For mains we ordered John dory and fillet steak - the vegetables that accompanied both were undercooked and luke warm - obviously pre prepared and kept heated. The John Dory was frozen which is a bit of an insult when paying so much - it wasn't presented with any sort of finesse - just put on the plate with little to no care.

The steak came with frittes and vegetables as well as peppercorn sauce - the steak was cooked as requested but the cut of meat was poor, under seasoned and barely warm. The frittes were old, cold and again had obviously been pre prepared and left out.

The food came out for entrees and main courses within 5 minutes of ordering - alarm bells started ringing immediately but by that point it was too late to cancel as by the time we had left our entrees the mains were out.

The staff that served us was a black tracksuit, trainers and had no rapport.

It's such a shame that a restaurant in such a lovely setting can get Italian cooking ( which is by far the easiest to get right) so wrong.

Hilariously when we asked for the bill it took over 15 minutes.

Avoid going to this restaurant at all costs - an absolute waste of money for extremely fast, poor,...

We had a similar experience to Martyn Jenkins, mentioned in the reviews below. Wish we had checked the reviews before we went. Given the pleasant setting, this place has so much potential, but sadly our experience was poor.

Our starters arrived within minutes of us ordering. The calamari was deep fried and reconstituted, clearly out of a freezer bag. The lasagne was mainly pasta, with little meat or sauce, which again arrived within seconds of us finishing our starters. The waitress removed the used cutlery from our starter plates and expected us to recycle and re-use them for our main course, which was bizarre, so we had to ask for more.

This place is clearly busy because most people on holiday will look at the venue and think it seems a nice setting for a meal, however they will perhaps only go once.

Whether it is intentional or not, the staff appear to be trying to get sittings done as quickly as possible to maximise profit and keep ingredient costs to a minimum. Whilst all businesses in the catering industry need to be efficient and keep an eye on overheads, this should not be noticeable to the customer, particularly when the price being paid is not cheap!

Not a good experience...

We came here because this was the only restaurant in Port Grimaud that served dinner at 6 o'clock instead of 7 o'clock.

A few minutes after ordering, the calamari arrived, which clearly came from the freezer, soggy and mealy. At the same time as our starter came our main course. My wife had the entrecote with fries and I had the lamb chops.

For the entrecote they asked how she wanted it cooked, but this turned out to be irrelevant because the chef had his support sole served. My chops weren't bad in terms of taste, I just couldn't eat more than half of it because of the quality of the meat in combination with the dull knife I had. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get through and had to eat with my hands. They said they didn't have a sharper knife.

We asked for the bill and immediately left never to return. So maybe the desserts are nice..?? We will...