Bistro Mar — Restaurant in Alcúdia

This restaurant is in a great location with atmospheric indoor and outdoor seating. The menu houses a great selection of seafood, paella and wine, but the flavours just weren't there, especially for the price bracket Bistro Mar is asking.

After hunting down what's meant to be one of the best seafood restaurants on the east coast of Majorca, I was really looking forward to this meal and the opportunity to taste some local grilled fish.

My partner and I ordered the mixed seafood grill, the grilled baby squids, the local octopus dish and a salad to accompany. With a couple of oranges juices and a bottle of water, this came to around €90, which if the flavour was there, would have been fine.

The baby squids were quite nice. Though lacking a little in flavour, the texture was perfect and they were not overcooked, which is a common mistake made with this dish. If I was told these were frozen squid and not fresh, unfortunately I'd certainly believe it, and the flavor would make sense.

The octopus dish, though beautifully presented, was plastered in salt, to the point where it was almost inedible and also made me question it's freshness. A shame as I love octopus.

The mixed Seafood Grill had a good selection of fish fillets and fish on the bone, as well as some shell fish. The selection was great, the flavour was hit and miss. For someone who regularly eats grilled fish, I was confused as to how most the fish tasted like oil, and had a texture not dissimilar to that of pan fried fish, dissapointing to say the least. The shell fish was fine and I'm sure the bad stomach which came later was by pure coincidence, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd probably say the mussels were not quite right.

I felt the service was pleasant all night, but attention only came when we flagged people down, resulting in us never seeing the same server twice at our table. In short, the staff seemed overworked but we're never rude to us, which is fine, just don't expect a personal service here.

I will also mention that there is ample parking right outside for a small fee, but you can leave your car here as you wander the port after your meal too.

Ultimately, paying €90 for two people without alcohol is not a problem if the meal is good, unfortunately here it wasn't, and I felt the quality of food was on par with frozen food.

Can't imagine I will return to Bistro Mar but if you do decide to visit, I'd probably risk the paella, or search elsewhere for...

We were a party of four adults at this restaurant last night. My partner & I live here in Mallorca & friends visiting have been coming to the island for years.

I’m giving this restaurant 2 stars for the location & service alone as food & drinks would score nothing.

Beautiful setting on the pier, nice outside space. Service was ok considering there were a lot of tables & it was very busy.

My partner & friends wanted cocktails but they had no menu for this. They asked for Long Island ice teas, we had some others in the port that night which were great, & a mojito. Both cocktails here were terrible. My friend said the worst mojito she has tasted, now we know why there was no cocktail menu.

Now to the food. Our friends ordered paella, my friend who loves paella & could eat it everyday, I had grilled salmon & my partner had chicken skewer kebab.

My partners kebab was dry & the chips wilted & obviously frozen. They have a certain way of doing homemade chips here & they were not like that.

My salmon came with boiled potatoes & vegetables, I was not given an option. The boiled potatoes were grey & had a hard skin on them which was hard to cut into. The vegetables were cold, soft & watery & the salmon was also quite watery. I didn’t eat any of the potatoes or vegetables & only half the salmon. When my plate was taken I wasn’t asked if there was a problem with the food, considering most of it was still on the plate!

Now the paella, I could tell when it came out it wasn’t going to be good, obviously living here & eating this a lot over the years. My friends didn’t like it at all & said it was up there with the worst they have eaten.

The other thing I want to mention is the toilets. They are up a small wooden staircase & extremely small inside with one for ladies & one for men. I’m not a big lady & I found it very hard to manoeuvre inside there. I don’t know how many seats this restaurant has but it’s A LOT.

Safe to say I would not...

I’ve eaten here 2 times during my stay in Mallorca. The first night I was quite pleased with the seafood paella, it was about how I expected it to be, although the taste didn’t have much depth. It didn’t feel like it was «made with love».

The 2nd time I had nr 64 (Brocheta de rodaballo y langostinos with «lemon» sauce) and was extremely disappointed. I was expecting a nice and fresh meal with perhaps some salad and a summer-y light lemon sauce. What I got, was fish and shrimp (they were ok at best) with a whole BAKED POTATO that had only some aioli on top and boiled veggies (broccoli & cauliflower) as sides.

First of all, please mention what sides the dish comes with in the menu (they didn’t). I would not have bought this dish if they actually managed to give an impression of the full dish in the menu.

The «lemon» sauce didn’t even have a hint of lemon taste, but reminded me more of a failed heavy cream with butter sauce that you would eat with cod in Norway. I only managed to finish the fish and shrimps before I started feeling unwell because of the really unappetizing sauce. I don’t even know anyone that would like to eat a meal like that in a warm summer night in Mallorca.

I cannot properly express how disappointed I was with that second meal, my girlfriend also ordered the same and was equally disappointed and we were just talking about how much worse the taste got with each bite we took.

The service was also not great, not once did anyone ask us about how we felt about the food. I was waiting to explain what I didn’t like about the dish, but never got the chance.

If I were you, and considering where to go, I would honestly recommend against this restaurant. There are other restaurants that are cheaper, have better service and...