Surfside — Restaurant in Sliema

We gave this restaurant another chance as our last time there wasn’t a pleasant experience - not only we waited so long for our food and my pizza came 20min after my boyfriend’s main, but the food came cold. There was no a big crowd, just a badly organized work as we assumed. Today we wanted to order a gluten free pasta and a chicken wrap. The waitress told us that if I’m celiac I shouldn’t order this pasta as it’s cooked in the same water as the regular pasta (?!) like what?? I even asked why they use the same water as it’s so simple to use a fresh water and cook it. And then it’s a nonsense calling this even a GF dish, even for no celiacs. But…No answer was given. Instead, I was recommend to order pizza or burger - then my celiac disease wouldn’t be in the danger as I was assured. Finally I refused and sticked to just the starter which was a GF “bruschetta” with some confit tomatoes and cheese, poor in taste and the bread wasn’t crispy and no onion was added. So no real bruschetta, sorry guys. More like an American style toast with tomatoes and a bit of rucola on a side. After we finished, we were waiting almost 25 min for a simple burrito chicken wrap with as found out with loads of barbecue sauce, actually more sauce than chicken and fries that were definitely frozen before and completely without taste. The staff communicated poorly there as we had to ask how much we still have to wait for the this “burrito”, but nobody was caring, rather ignoring. But there were a lot of service guys that looked like they have nothing to do but the dirty dishes were covering the main bar and the dish return area, what didn’t look welcoming or nice. Actually same thing last time we visited… The cherry on top is the payment. You have to wait in line before the entrance like on the student cafeteria and they’re looking for your receipt. A wrong one was passed to us and we ask to find the right one. The service guy found this and read it all through but we had to mention that a pineapple juice can be removed from the bill as we’ve never got this to our table even though we ordered it. Basically maybe it’s better you pay not the person that serves you to the table, but the other guy, as we have to not consider the tip, because we would never leave it. Never again. Seriously, this is not a restaurant, not a fast food bar, cause nothing’s fast there…more like a student cafeteria but with a very bad organized workflow and meh food. So pity. Cause the potential in this place is big and the view special. I worked in hospitality and managed a bar, so I have some knowledge - so it’s not just a simple...

The view is very nice but that is all because the staff and food are terrible. I’m sure they don’t need to worry too much about having good food or professional staff because they have an excellent location and there are plenty of tourist to stop by. I’ve been there a few times for drinks and lounge, the staff is always quite incompetent, but the worse is really the food… I was there twice for dinner, first time was very mediocre and the second time, I couldn’t even touch the food. The garlic bruschetta was burned Maltese bread with a few sprinkles of cheap cheese and very underwhelming garlic flavour. We managed to taste the few parts that were not completely burned. We took this in stride and laughed it off, hoping the mains would be decent enough to eat. God, were we wrong. The produce has such low quality. The salads seems like vegetables from a tin can that were just tossed in a plate, with stems and pits, the olives weren’t even unpitted, then a squirt dressing on top, which was clearly not fresh either. We decided to leave because we were not touching that food and to top it off, when we asked for the check, we were told to go to the bar ourselves to pay there, so we did but no one was even acknowledging us. We were not going to chase them to pay for that dreadful food, so we just left. No one came, no one said anything, we were a group of 6. We even stayed outside discussing what happened and deciding where to go,...

The view was amazing! We came here with friends to eat and celebrate. The restaurant came with a cake and candles, very lovely arranged! There was a huge difference in food quality, the spareribs were amazing, very well marinated, well oven baked. The burgers, were just horrible, we were asked how well done we wanted the burger, medium rare was what several people asked for. All burgers were well done, very dry and hardly eatable, that was rather of a disappointment. I would absolutely not recommend the burgers to anyone. Ribs, truly a yes! It seems that the desserts were also differing in quality as well, the brownies were OK, the cheesecake was good, but the other vanilla ice cream were just so-so. The place is absolutely stunning, downstairs there was a club, playing loud music, on the one hand it was nice, created some atmosphere. On the other hand, there were only 3 toilets available for all the guests, and with the club, it creates a huge cue near the toilets, a bit annoying. In the end, having a restaurant near the seaside is amazing, but it is very cold later in the evening, especially if you are not wearing a coat or anything, so be aware of that. Would I recommend this place? For the ribs, absolutely, for the view, yes. For all the other stuff, I would say go...