La Vela — Restaurant in Nice

I try to give objective reviews always, but the service in this restaurant took us by a surprise - to say the least . It's a certain type of never-traveled-outside-of-France attitude that the male waiters (2 of them and voila one of them was at our table) have. We've travelled from Asia and had lunch elsewhere around 4pm, after 2 hours of walking we wanted to sit and have a glass of wine - in the end we opted for a bottle of wine.

Then after we were served the wine, it was poured for me and my partner and one of the glass had insect in it, a small bug or something like that. We informed the waiter about this and he brought us a second glass and literally poured the wine from the glass with a bug to the new glass - together with the bug. Now in normal restaurant, whatever they think they try to be, they would take back the glasses and open a new bottle for us - but not here. The guy took the glass and went to the back and probably just took out the bug with a spoon or something- now we didn't give it a thought but the attitude of the waiter is beyond ridiculous for a simple thing as serving you in clean glass.

After that fiasco we continue with our drinks, were down half a glass each and the waiter came again asking if we would like to order .

Bear in mind we were both stuffed from late lunch and since it's a nice atmosphere I felt bad not to order anything- so I suggested we just get pizza to share or something light.

Couple of minutes later waited came back saying we are not allowed to share?! The audacity of this is beyond my understanding. Then we asked ok so what can we order that is light, we don't want to eat just to have a drink. Waiter recommended that we move to the lounge then - and we were more than happy to do so. Maybe a minute later he came back saying lounge is full and we have to order one more dish , so we opted for french fries - as mentioned we're having a snack and not a full on dinner. And to add to this absurdity, waiter said we can't ordered french fries and that it has to be a main course. Not to argue further with the most arrogant person I've ever met , we just got a salad that we didn't even eat and got them to throw it after we left (way to go on ecological footprint) and the pizza finished he bottle and left.

Don't get me wrong, place looks amazing and food is hit and miss, I went on Google to see the reviews it has and most of them say the same thing about their arrogance - and the replies from the management/restaurant itself just prove it even further. As a European who lives abroad and travels the world with work and as pleasure I give myself the right to say i would never ever come back to this restaurant and just to summarize why: -bug in a glass of wine -poured wine and expected us to be ok with the bug in a glass -didnt offer to replace the wine -forced us to order main course even though we explicitly said we are there for drinks -didnt even bother to offer to pack almost UNTOUCHED salad and half a pizza for us 5o takeaway -never came to ask if all food is ok -slow service -general arrogance of male staff -horrible HORRIBLE stuffed eggplant salad

Few good things: Music was great Pizza was simple but good and with good tomato sauce - I'm assuming is Roma tomato Wine was nicely chilled

I wish i can give negative stars for service.

And to the restaurant who is probably going to respond to this with another ignorant french comment or arrogant attitude - go travel to even neighboring countries and see what hospitality is. Charging exorbitant prices doesn't make you "exclusive" or "premium" or "high end - high class" - it's the service and food quality that does that. A good restaurant would never allow that service but I am assuming you don't care as you're only interested in tourists who stumble upon this while walking around the beach and don't bother reading the reviews prior to coming - as they won't come back both because they don't live there and because of mediocre food and...

Came here for dinner recently as a celebration and was, in all honesty, a little let down. Going into this place we had seen the menu so we were aware of the upmarket prices and so I would say had expectations in line with this. Most prices were around the €30 mark (starters and a few main options) but these do go up to towards €100 for other dishes and specials. I have read a lot of complaints about these prices but if that's what they want to charge and they think the ingredients are worth; it is displayed before you take a seat and is somewhat expected due to location. Saying this €8 for a soft drink is DOUBLE what we have found most places chrage for the same drink. I wouldn't say the food is bad by any means and I did quite enjoy the very cheesy margarita pizza (one of the 2 vegetarian dishes and probably the cheapest main meal option). My problem however is more within the details you would expect from an up market place like this one. To start the server seemed a little dismissive especially when not ever member of the table wanted to order a drink from the menu. We felt as if there was a contrast between the service offered to our table and that to those of who we presumed to be locals. This became apparent as our server asked the table next to us if their food was okay but not ours. I suppose this could be simply due to a language barrier or if it was something to do with the "type" of people they assumed us to be.

Other small details I think this restaurant could work on include serving the bread with butter or oil (and at a minimum providing a small plate so we didn't cover the table in crumbs before the mains). As well as potentially revising the menu slightly as I felt the vegetation options were very minimal and boring.

In summary; I felt as if this place charge more money than the overall experience is worth. I believe if they revisited small aspects (specially relating to service) it would make the prices feel much more reasonable. The venue and the food are not necessarily lacking but I am confident to say that you would be able to find similar quality food with much better service at a fraction of the price at any other restaurant that is not located right on the beach.

p.s As has already been mentioned this does not feel like the type of place it would be acceptable to share dishes or drinks between guests. There is definitely a sense of pressure to spend a large amount of...

We dined several times at La Vela in 2024 and were very impressed. The ambience, the service, and the food were excellent. Consequently we were very much looking forward to dining there again whilst in Nice this year. What a disappointment. Nothing was the same. Whilst we were greeted warmly by front of house, the rest of the evening went downhill rapidly. Our waitress was very strange with zero people skills. It felt as if she was an automatan who had learnt a script which she then regurgitated. When we answered her questions such as ‘where are you from’ she had no follow up or any interest in our answers so the conversation went nowhere. We ordered sushi as a starter but what arrived was bizarre. It consisted of two plates one of tuna slices and the other of salmon. A plate was plonked in front of us both but the tuna sushi was not cold. It was luke warm which we pointed out to our waitress who showed no interest in the gentle complaint. We avoided the tuna dish completely after one single mouthful. We then placed our order for the lobster spaghetti main course only to be told that the lobster was unavailable unless we wanted it with a salad! We failed to understand this at all. My girlfriend instead ordered truffle pizza whilst I ordered chicken. When it arrived, the pizza was insipid and unappetising whilst my chicken seemed to have been plated up a few hours before and then reheated before being served up. I have no clue what sauce engulfed the chicken but it was not especially tasty. The accompanying vegetables were nondescript. We shared the crème brûlée which was nice. We had ordered cocktails and they were excellent only marred by a second robotic waitress spilling the drinks onto the floor and us as she placed them on the table with no acknowledgement or apology. We were eager to leave as soon as we had concluded the meal but we both left a large portion of the main course. Given that last year’s offerings were stunning, this year was a huge disappointment. There was in addition no atmosphere. We do not intend to return to La Vela for...