La Parada Umhlanga — Restaurant in KwaZulu-Natal

I have just come from having dinner from La Parada tonight, being a Sunday evening, it wasn’t very busy as I prefer that. The restaurant is a showcase, like a little town in Spain… It’s just a pity that the service and the food didn’t match up to the ambience and atmosphere. The waitress was atrocious on a quiet night, extremely rude and abrupt, never checked on us and we had to ask other waitrons for services. The food was not Mediterranean or Europe based, lots of fancy words in the menu but from starters to mains, very basic. Starters I had the prawns which looked like it was just drenched in olive oil and some spices, for mains I regret ordering the Lamb Rump, there was more fat than meat, but nevertheless I requested for Well done, my meal arrives and the lamb is Rare but the chips are ‘very well done’ almost burnt, the lamb still has blood rolling of it… I couldn’t send it back as the waitress was gone awol… I was still awaiting my glass of Merlot halfway into my ‘bloody’ meal… eventually she arrives, i ask about my wine and a side plate to send my lamb back to kitchen to cook it as I desired it to be… 5 minutes later, the wine comes and she takes the meat away, after a while, the Lamb comes back and it’s still ‘pink red’ inside, so I didn’t bother, ate the salad and burnt chips, waited for ages for her to clear the table and in all that time I lost my desire to have a coffee, so I just requested the bill. Still tipped 10% as I’m obliged too, maybe it was an ‘off’ day for the kitchen staff and the waitress, but it was my 1st and last time...

Let me tell you something before you take me lightly I work for customer service so I am very experienced in such department to a point where I am able to note what a good customer service is. I've been going to Laparada at umhlanga since 2023 and that was through my friend because of their experience with you all up untill last night. Your stuff ignored the most tipping loyal customer who provided you guys with a good word of mouth who also happens to be a regular, I'm still coming for the name of the waitron who took their order and proceeded to serve people who even came way after the order was requested. Not only that but your stuff has the sheer audacity to negatively speak about them just because he comes there for solo dates most of the time, does he not pay? Does he not tip, he actually does, all the time I fail to understand the lack of professionalism and failure to acknowledge a regular customer . Waited for the whole hour to be served till they ended up leaving, they left your establishment because you spoke badly about him always being on a solo date, not only that but since you were not so enthusiastic about serving him, you decide to ignore him till he left, kudos 👏you have successfully hurt my friend who is a very committed individual. This is not over, the relevant people will actually know what is good, and let me just say,...

Nice vibe, wouldn’t rush back for the food. I booked La Parada for my staff function which are only 3 of us. I loved the look of the sushi and cocktails on their socials. None of the sushi was available in vegetarian except for California rolls (which I can buy anywhere). I understand that not every restaurant caters for vegetarian but I asked if I could have some of their options without the seafood to be told no choose something else. I’ve been to many sushi restaurants that are always happy to remove the seafood from the dish and replace with avo or make a standard dish a bit more exciting. Let’s just say don’t go if you are hungry. I ordered a mushroom pasta (with truffle oil apparently) I would totally not mind paying the price I paid if the pasta did indeed have truffle flavour but it was basically an Alfredo without meat for R180. My colleagues had a prawn pasta and a pulled beef pasta and both were R185 each. Mushrooms definitely don’t cost as much a seafood and meat so an absolute rip off. The bowl arrived and it honestly didn’t touch sides. Really disappointing to pay a fortune for the size portions and lack of pizzazz. It is a beautiful scenery, cocktails are great but food was a bit of a let down....