Le Collins - Restaurant Vieux Port — Restaurant in Marseille

We sat down for lunch at around 1pm. The restaurant was not busy since there were quite a few free tables. The server was very friendly, however, she could not be better than the restaurant she works at. The food is horrible. The mussels with cream were not freshly made. The cream was just poured on top of the steam mussels. The onion in the cream was not finely chopped and it was undercooked. The calamari were even more terrible since they were inedible. At the price of €19 and being on the Vieux Port, I thought that they would serve fresh calamari. Instead the calamari were clearly frozen, not prepared at the restaurant, with a thick batter and deep fried, retaining plenty of oil. Although the menu said that the main courses could be served with rice or vegetables, the server said that only fried potatoes can be served... which meant that we had a bowl of fried potatoes with the mussels and a side of fried potatoes with the calamari. The side sauce with the calamari was not freshly made as it had a dark thickened surface crust to it. It seems that the restaurant just heats previously cooked foods that might as well be prepared off-site. This is not a place to go. It actually put us off to try any of the other restaurants along the front of the Vieux Port as they all appear to be tourist traps serving bland foods, which are not prepared with any passion, but just to rip off money from customers. We obviously didn't try...

My visit to Le Collins was quite enjoyable. For the quality of food, the prices are cheap. In the beginning, I set the expectations very low, since: -we had to wait quite some time to be served, -instead of giving us a menu the service was chit-chatting with other clients and the lady waiter messed up our order and gave us a water bottle without gas, and we ended up with two bottles - the only problem with that is that we were confused and ended up with barely any space.

Here is where all my complaints end, as we thankfully didn't have to pay for the mixed-up water :) Plus we liked the bright-haired young waiter that cheerfully accepted our order, really nice 👍👍👍

To our surprise, the food arrived quickly: moule with fries and paella first, a little later carbonara. Everything looked wonderful, especially the carbonara. When it comes to taste:

-carbonara 5/5 excellent taste and looked very nice :) -moule and fries 4/5 Were a little cold. When the fries cooled completely they seemed a little dry. On the other hand, moule had an amazing sauce, too bad they got cold so quickly :(( ❤ -paella 3/5 looked alright, but it had too many root spices. Not bad but also...

Just don’t. We wanted something to eat while other places nearby closed their kitchen so it was a bit out desperation that we sat down at Le Collins. Service was long overall but given the time we thought that we couldn’t really complain... well they gave us much more to complain about anyways. Got an ashtray with chewed gum in in, cutlery with finger prints on them... not very covid-friendly if you ask me. Waiters looked on the verge of a breakdown - you can dream of a smile or a friendly look your way.

Ordered the salmon pasta — it was edible but I could do better at home in half the time it took for them to serve it. Parmesan ? Never heard of it. The grated cheese we had was clearly from the nearest supermarket and visibly in its container for quite sometime...and certainly not in a fridge.It looked melted if not old. You guessed it, this was obviously not worth the 40+€ bill, not even for the terrasse setting by the port that clearly lacked taste compared to its neighbours. Oh and one last piece of advice - don’t you dare look inside. Unless you like...