la Rosa Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Île des Terres Basses

We dined at this restaurant while in St Maartin and while the ambiance was absolutely beautiful, the service was atrocious, and food was hit or miss. They seemed to be short staffed as there appared to be 3 servers and a cook. For a Saturday night the place was half empty. There were two large parties and several smaller tables with families.

Ambiance - We rated the ambiance 5 stars. The set up was absolutely beautiful, the weather was perfect for outside dining, the place is hidden and private, you could hear the music from the casino and sit her places on the main strip. For that we give it 5 stars. One thing to note is, if you choose to dine outside, be prepared to see large roaches. This is at no fault of the restaurant, but while we were outside, there were 3 very large roaches that our husbands chased down and squashed so that they didn’t disturb our dining experience. This is no fault of the restaurant as they didn’t come from the restaurant, but the surrounding areas. (I hate bugs, but I survived). Service - the service was absolutely terrible. We had a reservation, and In all, it was 3 hours to get food. Even longer to get the check so we couldn’t wait to get out of there. Our waitress was not rude, but was not super friendly. I imagine she was very stressed. We were there for 40 minutes and she was just serving water. We placed a drink order and that took awhile to come back. Maybe an hour after our arrival we received the drinks. When she finally came back with the drink order, we asked if we could order our appetizers and main courses at the same time as we were really hungry (hint hint). Nope, she leaves for another 20 minutes, and one member of our party had to go find her to ask her to place our food order. Food order was placed about an hour and a half into our arrival. Takes about another half hour for appetizers to arrive and some bread. Lastly, our food arrived probably about 2.5 hours or so after our arrival. The food also arrived as different times so, some people didn’t receive their food until maybe 20 minutes or so after the first set of meals. We had to keep asking for water, etc. Food - the food was hit or miss. My husband I both enjoyed our main entrees, but not our appetizers. Other members of our parties food looked much less appetizing and they said that their food was very bland and not very tasty.

The chef came out at the end to ask how everyone enjoyed the food. I was dining with Caribbean people who tend to not hold their tongue. Some reported their meals as great, and others reported their meals and not very good. The chef decided to comp us with some “limoncello” shots. I didn’t personally try the shots, but did hear that they...

Awful experience. Our first clue should have been that they had a reservation available for New Years Eve on short notice. Barely a greeting upon arrival. My son pointed out that a stray cat was inside the restaurant when we arrived. Cats were a theme of the night, as there were at least 5 that appear to live in the alley where the restaurant is located.

We were not told about a fixed menu when we made our reservation. We asked if we could order from the normal menu and were told no. The fixed menu was 3 courses for $120 per person and had 4 options for each course (the only remotely Italian dish was a seafood pasta entree that you can get at any restaurant in the island). About 30 minutes after we ordered, a group of 12 in their early 20’s arrived. They balked at the pricing of the fixed menu, then we’re allowed to order from the regular menu. We questioned this, and we’re told that they were ‘locals’ so they were allowed for order from the regular menu. They were clearly not locals since they were talking about how nice their hotel was, so they either price gouged tourists that looked like they could afford it, or profiled this group because they thought they couldn’t afford the menu.

The food was okay and the servers were nice enough, but their Lobster Thermidor wasn’t worth spending $500 to eat in cat piss alley when I could get better for $40 from The Greenhouse and eat with...

Sorry to disagree with those of you who wrote good reviews, please allow us to share our experience from last night. We arrived at approximately 7:30 and were seated. After that we were basically ignored for the next 30 minutes when we had to flag down someone and ask to order. Another 10-15 minutes the waiter finally arrived. Took our orders and seemed annoyed with us. He offered a half-hearted apology for us having to wait. Unfortunately the waiting was far from over. We waited for our food for another 45-50 minutes with no one bothering to come to our table to update us or ask if we needed anything. We asked another worker and was told she would check on our order. She never returned. We waited another 15-20 minutes and finally decided the lack of caring for us was just over the top. So finally at 9:20 we told them we were leaving and got up and left. Never did get our food. Just some below average bread and two glasses of wine which they had the nerve to charge us for. We had been to this restaurant in the past and liked it, but after last night and the way we were disrespected we will NEVER go back there. They are understaffed, rude and uncaring of their...