Driftwood Restaurant Aruba — Restaurant in Oranjestad (city)

Let's start with the good. The service started off very good, with friendly staff greeting you, opening doors for you, etc. The atmosphere was great, with actual driftwood everywhere, making the place uniquely looking. My family went there because of the overall good reviews on Google and 2 dollar signs with cheaper dishes. Oh well we were very disappointed. All of the dishes we got, including the garlic bread and the (free) sweet pancake thing we got with our meal were very much from frozen / TV dinner type. The presentations looked way better than how the dishes tasted. My wife got one of the grilled fish dishes with Aruban sauce. The sauce was there to cover the frozen mushy tasting dish underneath. I got the rack of lamb that was supposed to be medium. It came out very rough and very well done, almost gave me the impression it was frozen then microwaved then maybe was put on grill for like 10 seconds to get the char flavor. I don't even remember what my son ordered. He barely touched his food. My younger son got chicken tender from the kids menu. It's very meh. Now back to the service angle. They had a floor manager like person roaming all the tables. He eventually had to take our order because our waitress simply went away after hearing that we only wanted water. She came back exactly once during our 50+ mins of stay, didn't really say anything. The young bus boy who delivered our cooked food even came by twice and was much friendlier than our waitress. At least the floor manager was decent and interactable. We waited 10+ mins for our free dessert that's part of the kids menu and another 10+ mins for a to-go box and our check. 3 nearby tables for much better and faster service than our table. I gotta think it's gotta be the fact that they all ordered wine. I would not recommend anyone to come here. There are much better restaurants nearby. Unless you want to pay $120+ for 2 dishes and 2 kids...

We discovered Driftwood Restaurant through an advertisement in the Aruba guide, promoting it as a daily catch, fresh seafood restaurant. Naturally, we were excited to enjoy a delicious seafood experience.

The atmosphere inside was quite unique, with decor resembling an outdoor setting, complete with engraved fences on the walls. For starters, we ordered the fried calamari and seafood chowder. The calamari was excellent—crispy, fresh, and perfectly cooked. However, the chowder was rather underwhelming, just average and nothing memorable.

For the main course, we opted for the Captain’s Mix, expecting a flavorful assortment of freshly cooked seafood. Unfortunately, the dish was a huge disappointment. The lobster tail was tough and bitter, while the scallops were disappointingly small, barely the size of a green pea. The rest of the seafood didn’t fare much better. To make matters worse, they didn’t serve melted butter with the lobster, offering a different sauce on the side that didn’t complement the seafood at all.

At $58 for one dish, you expect perfection, but this meal was far from it. Sadly, it felt more like a tourist trap than a genuine seafood experience. I cannot recommend...

This place came highly recommended from locals and visitors alike so we were excited about it. It was decent but not rave-worthy. The food would probably get 3-4 stars if that were the only thing being graded. Unfortunately, the rest of the experience was subpar. The amount of waitstaff in contrast to their lacking efficiency was so bad it became comical and in a way, somehow enjoyably laughable. At multiple points during the meal there were 6-8 waiters that would stand together at the head of the dining room. They would then disperse into the dining room for a lap, not approaching any tables, only to regroup in the same spot they left from. All the while our water glasses were empty, the bill remained unprinted and we just watched in amazement. We had a waiter that seemed nice but we didn’t encounter him after he took our original order. There was this one very skinny younger fellow that hustled his tail off. He deserved double whatever he was making. Anyway - summary goes like this: food was okay enough, service was comically bad/weird, and ultimately expectations were not met which may be no fault of the restaurants in the end but should be taken into account...