Le Comptoir de La Tourraque — Restaurant in Grasse

A couple of years ago me and my wife had a lovely dinner in this restaurant, so we were really excited to return there. Today we've had here one of the worst dining experiences I can remember in recent years. In a nutshell:

We've waited about 40 minutes to be able to order anything. The waitress mostly ignored us after we were seated. Kind of annoying, but we weren't in a rush and we had fond memories from this restaurant from a couple of years ago. Still, it wasn't a great start. Finally the time to order came and with it - another weird episode! The waitress asked us to pick the wine for our dishes while we still haven't had our aperitif! She was also somewhat pushy on what to order - "we recommend this aperitif, starter, main course, dessert". Normally, I don't mind recommendations, but it didn't feel particularly sincere. Here it gets interesting. Our starters were the recommended shrimp lollipops, which were simply 5 boiled shrimps on a stick, with a bit of decoration and some aioli sauce. It was clear they had been prepared in advance and had been stored in a fridge. Not a big deal, we understand that many things are prepared in advance. My wife made a remark that her shrimps were very cold, almost frozen when the waitress asked if we had liked them, and that she was disappointed by them. A bit later the waitress came back to our table and said she had passed my wife's feedback to the chef, who asked us to leave if we were unhappy with how the food was prepared. (!!!) Supposedly for years everyone liked these "amazing" shrimp and we were the first people to complain about them. At first I couldn't believe what was happening - my wife's feedback wasn't particularly harsh and the waitress's English was quite poor, so I wasn't sure whether she really meant we should leave. We told her that we feel that's no way to treat one's customers and that her attitude was quite rude. She didn't offer any form of apology and we left. Good riddance!

All fond memories of the place have been totally erased at this point. We've traveled all over the world, and have visited quite a few nice restaurants, and we've never been involved in anything remotely close to what happened today. I feel sorry for anyone who's refusing to accept feedback, even if they disagree with it. Antibes is full of great restaurants, so do yourselves a favor and visit one of them, instead of this one.

P.S. If the owner is reading the feedback here I'd advise them to train their staff better when it comes to hospitality and customer centricity. It's not normal to get attacked by the staff when you went to restaurant to have some nice time there. My home country Bulgaria is notorious for bad service in restaurants, but what happened today would put the worst Bulgarian...

We were incredibly disappointed by our experience at Le Comptoir de la Tourraque. We had a reservation for 9:30pm and we seated 14 minutes after our reservation (9:44pm). Although we arrived a bit early (9:20pm), the restaurant was not busy and we still had to wait 24 minutes to be seated. Our central concern was the health of our friend, who was recently injured and could not walk or stand for very long. Upon being seated, our group was met with severe hostility from the server. I have lived in France for over 8 years and have been on numerous vacations to the South, including Antibes. I have never had as bad of a restaurant experience before, either in France or elsewhere. Throughout the service, we were met with rude, attacking, comments, aggressive actions when food was delivered, and were not adequately attended to, despite eventually being the last table in the restaurant. At the end of the night, the server did not provide us with a printed bill (upon our request), and instead only presented us with the card payment machine (which we were not allowed to touch or review). We were told the total price of the bill, but were never provided an itemized list. After leaving, we realized we had overpaid and, upon contact with the restaurant, learned that there was a service fee for each person, which was not indicated anywhere on the menu, in the restaurant, or communicated by the waitress at time of payment. Service fees are typically legally required to be disclosed, but we did not receive the bill to review before paying. Finally, after a member of our group shared this experience through a Google review, another member of our group was contacted by the restaurant via email with an intimidating message with misguided misinformation about our experience.

We regret not having more carefully reviewed the restaurant's other negative comments online, as they are directly reflective of our own experience. It is a shame, since the restaurant has a charming exterior and good food, but there is no excuse for the absolutely atrocious nature of the service, which ultimately ruined our dining experience. We feel a responsibility to share our review with other potential guests of this restaurant. We recommend finding similarly quaint establishments for your dining, which are plentiful in Antibes, that can certainly provide a higher quality of service, respect, and dignity than Le Comptoir de...

DO. NOT. GO. THERE. We had a reservation for 9h30pm and got there a bit early, and since one of our friends was using a cane we asked for a chair for her to sit. 10 minutes after the original time of our reservation they were finishing putting the cutlery etc on the table, so my friend decided to move and sit close to the table on a different chair (not AT the table, she simply moved to another free chair close to it), and the waitress already started giving us annoyed looks. When my friend thought they were done setting up the table she politely asked if it was good for us to come. The waitress said in snappy French that if we were in a hurry we should’ve gone to a McDonalds, gave us the shoulder and left. When she came back she asked if we were sitting and, since my friend was looking VERY annoyed, she asked if there was something wrong. My friend told her she wasn’t being polite and she simply told us that WE weren’t being polite since she told my friend to sit on an specific chair and she moved (talk about overreaction).

They were late and at no point we complained or cared, but since our arrival the two waitresses were very unfriendly and extremely fake. We decided to stay since it was already almost 10pm and we were hungry and when we asked for the check, instead of a normal receipt she put her own machine at the table (where we couldn’t see the whole list of the order) and when I tried to scroll she told me not to touch it. After getting home and redoing the math, to no surprise anymore we found out that we were overcharged by around 12€. That’s no simple math error. This waitress mistreated us the whole time, almost threw the plates around, was more snappy than the French stereotype and took money from us in the most unusual way of presenting the check I’ve ever seen.

If they ever train or change the staff this could be a cute place and the food was indeed really...