Mari Beach Club Bali — Restaurant in Pulau Bali

We went to Mari Beach Club with our nephew visiting from New York.

We initially had a reservation for 5 people for dinner on the eve of Labor Day. At the last minute, we were joined by our two friends and their young son, bringing our total party to 5 adults and three children.

Despite sending a WhatsApp message asking about availability, the venue never responded.

We decided to go to the restaurant and increase our table from 5 to 8 people. At the door, we got our first sense that the place was not full at all. We were given several options for a group of 8 diners.

Once we got into the space, we noticed that the décor was lovely. The music from the DJ was good, but there were lots of empty tables.

Once seated, we were given one menu for 5 adults. The lighting was so bad that we need to use our phones to read the option.

We waited about 5 to 10 minutes to order our food. One person in our party was told the item he wanted was not available. He picked something else. That item was also not available. The waitress then offered to waive the minimum spend requirement due to this inconvenience.

What followed was a comedy of errors. beef kebab was flavorless and very small. My tuna tartare was way too salty. My cocktail was syrupy sweet. My friend asked for papaya for his fruit salad, but it never came.

All the orders came out at a leisurely pace, but one dish was missing…A grilled octopus dish.

We mentioned it to our server and they promised to expedite it. All the other dishes we ordered took 10 to 15 minutes to make it to our table. Suddenly, grilled octopus makes it to our table in about 5 minutes. We were all dubious. It also looked strange, not crispy and charred as one would expect.

The taste was also off. It was soft and chewy, as if it had been microwaved. My spouse had the waitress try it too. The waitress agreed that it tasted like it wasn’t cooked properly. The waitress agreed to just take that dish off the bill.

Now comes the time for the bill. A waiter who had taken several orders for our table brings the bill. The bill still had the grilled octopus on it AND he had the audacity to tell us that we hadn’t hit our minimum spend.

First, we had been told at the beginning of the night there would be no minimum, plus our group was actual quite close to the minimum spend anyways.

Second, we had been promised by the waitress that the grilled octopus would be removed from the bill.

We asked to speak to the manager on duty to voice our displeasure and it became clear what the problem was. There was zero attempt at service recovery. He just smiled and nodded at us like the village idiot. The least he could do was ensure we left with a good impression, all we had was a bad taste in our mouths (literally.)

And to add insult to injury, my 9 year old walked through one of the poorly marked pools on the way out, getting his shoes and socks soaked.

Go to Potato Head instead. Avoid this place.

UPDATE I got a call from the GM who offered a partial refund and which posted to my account on 13 June. I appreciate the gesture and revised my review up...

Poor customer service. Me and my wife arrived at the beach club around 2pm and even though we wanted the bean bags, there was not much shade and asked the staff if we can sit at the main bar area for now and later change to the bean bags. We also asked about the price if we did that since the minimum charge for the seats are all different. The staff told us that we can change the seat around 4-5pm and just need to pay for the difference of the minimum charge.

And about 2 hours later another staff (seemed like a more senior one) came to us and said that the staff we talked to earlier made a mistake and gave us wrong information and in order to change the seat, we’ll need to (on top of the minimum charge of our current seat) additionally pay the complete full charge for the bean bag and apologized for the miscommunication. We explained what was told to us and asked him to talk to the manager since this is a complete mistake of the staff earlier and because of that miscommunication we now need to pay a whole new amount of charge which doesn’t make any sense. We could have sat on the bean bag right away or could have come a little bit later (which is after 4pm) had we received the correct information.

The staff asked the manager and came back telling us that that is not possible. I asked to talk to the manager myself, and again, explained what was told to us about changing the seat. The manager in a brusque tone kept saying that she does apologize for that but it’s not possible to honor what we were told, since then the young staff will need to pay for the loss.

At this moment I got really upset and told her that it’s your responsibility to train your staffs so that they give the right information to the customers and not cause miscommunication. And if there was a mistake made, which is in this case, you as a manager need to try to fix the problem by adjusting the price or the policy and in the future prevent this from happening again, not threatening your client that a loss made needs to be compensated by a young staff.

She then went and grabbed the young staff (who initially gave the wrong information) and asked him if our story is true almost yelling at him in front of us. The poor guy almost had tears in his eyes and denied what he told us (of course he will to keep his job!). I was still very upset but didn’t want that staff to be in anymore trouble and told the manager that I don’t care about that anymore and I don’t want to waste anymore of my time dealing with this absurd situation, so just told her that we’ll not change our seats.

What a poor management decision. There were many vacant bean bags at the time we left and if the manager handled the situation better we as a customer would have been happy and the club could have collected more payment (since I was going to pay more for the difference), but neither was achieved.

Also the food and the drinks we ordered were below average and not good at all.

Unless you want to ruin your day by receiving wrong information from the staff, stay away from...

Pretty beach club in Canggu, great google reviews - “what could go wrong” we thought so we went in, we were so excited to spend our last night in Bali here

They checked our bags and took away our water and towels - all good. Immediately was advised that they charge a premium ($200 minimum spend for a day bed) - all good, went for it. Menu looks aesthetic and all looks fine. It all started going downhill when we were told that no camera was allowed (I had a canon g7x iii) but we were never told that at the door when they told us the t&c’s. The security was so rude when I asked “what’s the difference between taking the exact same photo on my iPhone and on my camera?” - he just told us “No because it’s the rule” and wasn’t willing to reason at all.

I looked up on their website and it says no “video camera” allowed - my camera isn’t a video camera and I wasn’t recording. Makes NO sense. What’s the point of a stunning venue if you don’t let ppl use their camera to take photo of THEMSELVES? (Yet phones are allowed??). The audacity for you ti charge such high prices and don’t let ppl take photos? Fair enough if it’s the rule but we were NOT told this and the website doesn’t support what they’re saying as well.

Talked to the security, staff, manager, no one listened and just told us it’s the “rule”.

We ordered a “energy booster” drink to begin which tasted questionable. The sashimi platter and salmon truffle flatbread were also SO average.

The cherry on top was when we were about to leave and asked the waiter if the water is free (becoz obviously we don’t wanna pay for it and we were leaving anyway). He said yes and asked if we wanted big or small. Water came. He then CAME TO US WITH A BILL. 82,000 RP FOR WATER. He then proceed to tell all his colleagues he DIDNT tell us it was free. Completely speechless. The operation manager came to chat to us who was probably the only nice staff we’ve spoken to all day. She listened and said she will provide the feedback to upper management. We paid for the water anyway after hearing that the staff would have had to pay for it out of pocket.

Would not recommend unless changes are made. Absolutely...