Restaurant A la Fresca Dénia — Restaurant in Dénia

We've lived in Denia for over 6 years now and love this restaurant for any meal, whether it be breakfast, lunch or dinner. They've shown themselves to have great service, delicious food, and consistent high quality of both those things. The ambiance is also fantastic, in the charming outdoor front terrace, the Mediterranean style interior, and the garden-like back terrace.

They also have a wood-fired oven for pizzas they make and other dishes, and their desserts are delicious and homemade. They have great wines and drinks, including four different detox fruit drinks that are delicious and healthy.

Some of our favorite dishes (which we've had several times now) are the following. They are all wonderful for sharing unless noted otherwise:

Taco crujiente de cochinita (slow-roasted shredded pork) with guacamole (1 unit, so perfect for 1 person). Huerta de temporada, a seasonal salad currently with roasted pumpkin, quinoa, granola, and a spicy sesame vinaigrette. Ensalada de queso de cabra (goat cheese salad) Buñuelos de bacalao (like cod fritters) Rollitos veganos de algas y verduras con jenjibre y wasabi (vegan spring rolls with wakame and vegetables with ginger and wasabi). Great vegetarian option. Boniato de joan folques relleno de rabo de toro en su jugo y espuma de queso de cabra (a large sweet potato, roasted and stuffed with slow-cooked oxtail and topped with goat cheese foam). This is one of our all-time favorites! Fideua de Pato, Foie y setas (the local noodle recipe made in a paella dish with duck, foie, and mushrooms). This is our favorite fideua in Denia!

As you can see, we obviously highly recommend this restaurant when in Denia or the Marina Alta area in general. It's also located inside Els Magazinos, a wonderful outdoor market type of area with street-food style vendors and other restaurants, as well as rooftops to enjoy.

The pictures also show dishes that we recently enjoyed with friends at...

Terrible. Avoid at all costs. My husband's meal never arrived. The other four meals were spaced out and didn't arrive together. All eating at separate times. Service was terrible and disinterested with the lack of a meal never arriving!

While trying to sort the bill out, inside with the manager , my teenage children were stopped from leaving, by the waitress as she said we were not paying our bill. How very dare she? . 🤯😤😤. Maybe others don't pay after such poor service - she definitely knew it had been very poor.

I was inside ,discussing her poor service and the lack of my husband's meal with my purse, with the manager at the time ! My husband using the toilets. I was ensuring the bill didn't include the meal we never had and passing on to the manager what had happened.

They waitress came in and began arguing with me (my purse ready to pay and cash in my hand) saying she was in her own and didn't see the problem as my husband had not been charged for his non meal !! I should think so !

I asked the staff if they thought their service had been acceptable, and if they went for a meal with their family they would be happy not eating and their meal not arriving. If they would be happy. ? Obviously they would not.

I wasn't asking for the earth- mainly saying the situation was a joke. And was met with rude and aggressive, defensive staff.

They could have said sorry. We messed up, simple.

And it would have felt a lot better for us the customers. .

I paid the bill in full, as we are good people - however we have been truly robbed and left feeling we had done something wrong.

Shocking. I should add we were not the only table , searching for their food to arrive or eating individually at a family table!

Avoid at all costs, and if you do go I hope your order is correct and everyone gets to eat! , if it's not don't complain or question it as you be left feeling like a...

Awful experience. 5 of us ordered. Salad, 2 x fritas, chicken pieces for the children, 2 x pizzas and drinks. The salad came after about 25 mins which was fine. The fritas and chicken followed. Then a 10 minute wait between the first dishes coming out and one of the pizzas, by which time the fritas, chicken and salad had been eaten. I then waited for the other pizza (margarita). Because of the length of time between the first 2 main dishes I waited...and waited. When my wife had finished her pizza (before mine had even arrived) I decided wasn't prepared to wait any longer for the pizza that never came and informed the server I just wanted a bill (minus the margarita). The bill came of €60. My wife said she refused to pay in full due to the awful service and went inside to discuss this with the manager. So my wife was inside questioning the service. I was inside using the toilet and my children headed to the exit where they were followed and accused of not paying. My kids told the lady their mum was actually inside with the bill. What followed was proper Fawtly Towers. The server didn't accept their was a problem with the service and blamed the missing pizza on the kitchen amd said she'd taken it off the bill. Our argument that it would be usual for the meals to arrive within a few minutes of each other and that it was not acceptable for one meal to not arrive at all was met with arguments over how 'we had ate the food we were served so we should pay in full'. Yes we ate the food because we were expecting the rest to arrive shortly after the first dish. Anyway, no discount was offered and the staff were very defensive. We paid the €60 as we are not criminals. The same can not be said of this business. In summary : Average food Awful service Bad attitude to customer service

Avoid...