Sandy Beach Restaurant — Restaurant in Langkawi Island

Terribly pricey for a food I'd rate below subpar. Lots of food items were unavailable and the prices were crazy bombastic!

For starters, when we arrived, the atmosphere seemed pleasant enough with dim string lights hanging around the restaurant and the beautiful view of the sunset in the background. The staff was quick on their feet to find us a table to seat us and bring the menu but that was when everything started to go downhill.

First things first, I immediately noticed the table cloth was DAMP despite it not raining for the past few days ever since we got to Langkawi and has been quite the dry spell. I'd understand if it rained a little but even then, wouldn't it be common knowledge to REMOVE the tablecloth from a table if it's raining? Could they not afford to DRY their table cloth even after ripping off their customers with that INSANE amount of fee they ask from their food?!

Nevertheless, we ordered their mojito (non alcoholic) and juices for beverages. As for the meal... Oh boy...

To start off positive, we ordered the satay for our starters. It turned up succulent and juicy. However, the peanut sauce that came with it was only enough for like maybe three people to share if I'm being lenient, and there were six people at our table. The satay was scrumptious, I'll give them that, but for the price? Probably not worth it. It was around RM36+ for a dozen and if that's not a rip off, I don't know what is.

Anyways, onwards to the real disaster of the dinner we had. We ordered the mussel which they said they were out of stock of and guided us to swap it out for something else, like that local clams. We did just that, but later on what arrived was the mussels they told us they had no stock off! And not to mention, it tasted frozen! The buttermilk sauce that it was cooked with did little to season or mask the taste of disappointment it left on my tongue.

On the side, we requested for some eggs, thinking it would be a fried egg per person but what arrived was just a small plate of egg, around the size of a BB plate. Yes, pretty small, to share amongst a group of six! You can imagine how miniscule a piece each of us got.

The fried squid came with a serving of Thai chilli sauce and was decent, but portion wise it was kind of small. They gave us two options of serving style but I can't recall the latter, anyways, I'd hate to think of how they could mess up any other dishes so I suppose something fried would be harder to mess up.

The vegetable dishes were decent, but nothing to write home about. Didn't taste like they seasoned it adequately, tasted like they just took it out of the water after blanching it and just served it on the plate. Perhaps I was just hoping for the final dish to be the saving grace of my dinner but, sometimes it's a novelty to dream.

Lastly, our highlight of the disaster and the real reason we came down to this stretch of the beach... The 'ikan bakar'. As a local, obviously the ikan pari/stingray, is the best choice as it is juicy and succulent, easy to eat and tender to the utensils, supposingly as easy as cutting into butter with a hot knife. Sadly, it was out of stock and we had to opt for a different fish, choosing instead the snapper. And my gawd, when the fish arrived, I had to blink twice as I couldn't tell whether it was charcoal they were serving. I guess they took the name literally as it was a BURNT fish served on the plate. And nope, no sauce, no lime, no lemon. Just a burnt fish. It hardly had any flavour, perhaps they forgot to season it or what, I don't know, but that sealed the deal for me. Terrible.

Right, remember the waiter I mentioned which was quick on their feet? He was nowhere to be found during the meal even when we were looking for him to give us another two sets of cutlery which he probably miscounted. The table was lacking sufficient napkins as well and it was difficult to get hold of the waiter as soon as he was done serving us our meal.

Midway through, there was an in-house live. As a conclusion, just go here for drinks. The food...

We decided to eat here for New Year’s Eve. Well that biggest mistake we made in 2024, almost 2025. We arrived at the restaurant around 10:30ish. There were no seats. They were too busy to put together seats themselves so we did it ourselves. (No problem, it’s busy, and we don’t really mind). We ordered lamb chops and also a steak for two people. They took the order. We waited for like half an hour. And the waiter signaled, “don’t worry, your order will be there soon”. Since we understood its busy that was nice. Then around 11:40 PM, another waiter came to us telling us that the steak is finished. Then when we asked about the other dish. They said the restaurant is closed now. I was so upset because they wasted our entire evening. At least if you’re not having the capacity or food left to accommodate to your clients, let them know. Even if they would have told us 10 minutes after ordering that they can’t accommodate us, I would have really not mind. But now it was 11:40, and all other restaurants were closed. So that we spent our new year hungry.

Good thing though is that looking at the reviews we...

I try to be balanced in reviews and appreciate that they are largely subjective - but to those who say this is the best restaurant in Langkawi or indeed Malaysia- you really need to declare your associations or interest!

I’m trying to be balanced but the food was mediocre at best.

The restaurant is in a lovely location on the beach but gave cafeteria vibes - with large patio tables covered in tablecloths - the one on our table had a large burn hole.

The selection of food is both limited and confusing - whilst it offers western, Malay, Indian, Chinese and Middle Eastern food - the selection in each section is limited and included bizarre choices. Portion size is small and the dishes came out as they were ready which meant rice was cold by the time fish arrived to accompany it.

The waiter was attentive. The night we visited there was some live music which was good and contributed to the atmosphere in a restaurant that was...