Fritolin, gostinstvo, d.o.o. — Restaurant in Upravna enota Piran / Unità amministrativa Pirano

I like local, small business restaurants and their food. Perhaps I had too high hopes for this one, specially when visiting it for the first time.

If I begin with positive things: nice environment, the staff is nice and hardworking, the prices are very friendly (in comparison to most other restaurants)

Why the negative review? very slow, lots of waiting, the food is a little meeh.

if I explain more: I think the organisation is a little faulty, resulting in us having dinner after more than an hour from arriving. They don't take reservations in advance, so you just come and sit at the side and wait for your table - that's fine, the waiter keeps a good eye over that and calls people that got in their turn. But by the faulty organisation I mean people who came like 30min after us, ate way faster than us, just because they got lucky. Nobody picks up your orders, but you gotta go down to the main window and stand in queue. We were very unlucky, because when finally getting our turn to order, we were told they accept only cash. So we had to go find an ATM, go back in queue again. We were sent back in the queue because the lady just rang a bell and people with their numbers came to pick up food and we had to wait with our order. So again... waiting in queue. This already took a lot of time. We finally place our order, pay the food, when the lady tells us it will now probably take more than 30min. After long waiting the bell ringed again and there were multiple numbers (orders) ready, so a lot of people came to stand in line again. Before getting our plates and getting them to our table, the food was already almost cold. Not really nice to eat cold calamari and potatoes with chard (which was by the way tasteless - no mediterranean taste as it should have, no salt at all, the potatoes were just cut in big pieces and it did not feel like potatoes with chard at all). The grilled calamari was fine, perhaps a little bit overdone and the octopus salad was tasty, but nothing special.

So, from my personal experience, I cannot say it was worth the patience to get to that food, I'm sorry. I'm sure the organisation can improove (at least make two windows, one picking orders, other giving out plates, when you expect such a crowd during the high season) and hire another waiter besides the...

2019 : Closed for Vacation until 28.1.2019.

Opinion from 2018: If this would be my first time at this place, I would not come back again. Service was terrible and unpolite. We were offered and we ordered baked potatoes and later received french fries (with sea bass - brancin). Who eats french fries with quality fish?! This would not be such a problem if the waiter would at least apologize but he even declined option to change. If you are a Slovenian, keep in mind that Italian guests are prioritized here. In comparison with our previous visits, food also did not meet the expected level of quality. Fish for sure was not fresh. I hope they just had a bad day. Until my next visit I'm lowering my rating to 2 stars only.

Opinion from 2017: Fresh sea food in a nice atmosphere in the center of Portoroz. Despite the crowd fast and polite service. Edit: In 2017 I rated this...

“The one authentic restaurant in Portorož” which is not that authentic and nice anymore. The staff is very bad, the meals were late at almost every table the day we visited the restaurant (for example we have waited 45 minutes and my girlfrend just kindly mentioned that we are waiting that long, in which the bartender replied rudely: “44 minutes exactly and is coming right up”. Like he knew they were late. And than we heard they forgot to take the order to the kitchen. I am really not the one asking for refunds or anything. But we didn’t even get an apology or a free drink, let alone a discount on the bill.

I will certainly think twice before choosing to dine at this restaurant again.

The food was good, though it’s not as special as it used to be. Perhaps it was due to the staff’s attitude and the long wait...