L' Effet Mer Plage — Restaurant in Grasse

A comedy of errors in a pretty setting led by some inexplicably rude and helpless managers. My friend had a pleasant previous experience so booked it for the arrival of me and my gf. He booked beds in the front row. However, once we arrived they put us over to the busy side. With a small fuss and 30 mins later they agreed to move us to the quiet side (which was empty since our arrival). Following that we began to settle in and relax. We ordered a round of beers and coffees again (as our first order was not brought out). Separately, it turns out the staff had not properly fixed the side tables into the sand. So when he put down the tray of drinks they spilled everywhere. Hot espresso all over my friends new white linen shirt (mandatory to wear for lunch) which is now brown all over. The young lad is apologetic to my friend and cleans up promptly. I overheard him saying not to worry about the shirt and lunch and I think okay, at least they will comp my friend his lunch. No no, he simply means don't worry about wearing a shirt to lunch (despite them ruining it). When we are finally seated for lunch (an hour later than our booking) there are some eyebrows raised by staff about my topless friend. The young server says not to worry he has cleared it with the manager. Three of us order the scallops. 'Unfortunately, we are out of scallops now at this stage of the afternoon' (perhaps not if we had been sat at our booking time). Then a waiter comes over giving out to my friend about no shirt and insists he puts one on. My friend patiently explains the situation again and we carry on. Then 5 minutes later an extremely rude member of staff comes flying over acting like an irate lunatic 'insisting' and shouting that a shirt is worn (mind you we are literally sitting in a sand pit - how necessary can a shirt really be for eating?). My friend's patience comes to an end he out right refuses to wear the shirt they have ruined, but will agree to wear one of their tee shirts if they really must insist. To which the manager responds shouting 'OKAY, Fine, €25 to BUY T-SHIRT' to which we all told him where he could go. Eventually they give him a tee shirt (not even to keep). And although we tried our best the day and meal is spoiled now. All for €150pp and the loss of one very...

Let me start by saying. I do feel for the owners a little. You can't control everything all the time. That being said. On the evening we dined here there must have been chef issues! I'll only review what I had rather than the whole group but the group (4 of us) all were disappointed. So. Arrived and there weren't many diners there, on expectations of having an attentive service due to the lack of patrons we were let down almost from the start. We had to wave to get attention and to order drinks. Food, I ordered caesar salad with prawns. Now I don't really like tomato or cucumber which is why I ordered the caesar! So when I got my salad I only ate half as most of it was tomato and cucumber. There's of it tasted ok. The main: fillet of beef with fries and salad! Now I like and asked for mine blue. It was medium to well done and was the worst cut of steak in history, the fries tasted candy looked like they were re heated left overs from lynch time, the mushroom sauce was tasteless. May I just add, 2 other people had steaks and they were worse!

My wife knows when I'm not happy and I very nearly complained but in fear of embarrassing my wife and friends I decided not to complain.

When we got near to the end of the evening there was a guy complaining which ended up in a very heated conversation directly behind us.

Now I'm going to assume it was just a bad day for the restaurant for one reason or another but sadly due to the very poorly executed cooking of our food we won't be going back.

Just one more point re food. The fish mixed grill was tiny dry portions of fish and was mostly inedible.

Le crystal does offer beach beds in the day at around €30 per day. This fee does not include at towel like other places along the beach front.

A positive to end on.

The friendliness of the staff did improve and the drinks were OK, the owner did give us a free shot at the end to apologise for the guy...

We’ve visited several times last summer - the location and atmosphere was great, food quality was very decent with some original meals like steak with fois gras, burger with truffle brie…. Yummie! Today’s visit, however, was such a disappointment! We ordered an entrecôte to share (900gr) but it was literally inedible - so poorly cooked and the meat was extremely hard to chew… Not to mention the price of 68 euros!!! When we complained the chef cooked it sort of medium well but it was still extremely chewy. It’s such a shame, because most other meals are delicious but when they wanted to charge premium, they didn’t even try to deliver. The other highly overpriced item on the menu - a pint of Heineken for a 10er. We have a family celebration coming up and we’re discussing renting the place but after this experience that’s...