L'Ancura — Restaurant in Sartène

In short: good food with underwhelming service and a challenging environment due to the heat. With better customer care and some cooling solutions, this place could be much more enjoyable. 🌟🌟🌟

We had a mixed experience at L'Ancura. From the moment we arrived, the service felt a bit chaotic. The woman who seated us and took our order spoke loudly — it almost felt like she was yelling — and seemed rushed and distracted, constantly looking around instead of focusing on the interaction. It didn’t set the most welcoming tone. On the other hand, a younger male waiter was kind, calm, and respectful, which helped balance things out a bit.

The food was overall good. We ordered lasagna, a couple of pasta dishes, and two steaks. When asking for our steaks medium rare, we were told that wasn’t possible — we had to choose between “red” or “medium.” We went with medium. Oddly enough, one steak came out nearly well done, and the other was closer to rare — but the rarer one was actually really good. Both had an excellent crust 🥩, showing quality searing technique, and the meat itself tasted great. However, like the mushroom sauce (which cost €3.50 for a very small portion 💸), everything could have used more seasoning. 🧂🌶

The salads were surprisingly good — fresh greens with a natural sweetness and a well-balanced dressing. 🥗

For dessert, we tried a red berry panna cotta, a caramel panna cotta, and a tiramisu. The caramel panna cotta was definitely the standout - rich and smooth. The red berry version was fine but not that great, the tiramisu lacked any real coffee flavor, but was otherwise great tasting. 🍮

The biggest downside was the heat. The restaurant had a lovely view and potential for a nice atmosphere, but it was simply too hot to enjoy. There were no fans or cooling, and it felt like sitting in a greenhouse. Sweat was unavoidable — we even saw other guests putting ice cubes down...

We chose this place as we wanted to eat early with the kids and were told here it was possible. We had an unfriendly reception when arriving and we were told that we could not choose where to sit as there were reservations coming in ten minutes .... Not true. Were only two tables taken when we left. Had three different waiters serve us, very impersonal. Pizza for the kids was okay but the set menu that we chose was pathetic; chewy "veal" and the goats cheese salad was more bacon salad than goats cheese. Fish was okay but more mashed potato than fish. The chocolate mousse was delicious but it ain't so hard to make chocolate mousse! The cheese option was two pieces of millimeter thin slices of the same cheese with a leaf of lettuce. So I suppose all location here.......

I would not say that the food is terrible but is not too good either. The biggest problem is the staf. I only asked for how long it will take for the food to be ready and the guy who served us started to shout that if we want fast food to go somewhere else. I tryed to explain that we are not trying to get the food faster, we only asked to be sure that will be able to catch the ferry. Then he started cursing me in french. Too bad I speak french and...