La Baia — Restaurant in es Mercadal

First I’ll apologize for being a food snob from Washington DC. These two stars are for the service and the restaurant’s position only. It’s rare I’ll take the time to really come down on a place but I’m making an exception here solely because it has the potential to be very good with minimal effort. And I say that not because the food is good to start with but because they have the location, facilities and staff to make it a shining star if only they obtained quality ingredients and found someone who could combine those ingredients correctly. It’s hard to know where to start but we could begin with salt. It is used sparingly to enhance the flavor of food and should play a part in most cooking. Vongole- good clams(one of the most wonderful ingredients available in menorca) need not be over cooked then paired with a reasonable pasta sauce base ruined by gallons of greasy oil in which the entire dish was floating. Eggplant parmesan stack was not good-lacked any flavor, mushy undercooked eggplant, lumpy cheese product I couldn’t tell was mozzarella or parmesan. And the kicker was dusty store bought parmesan(I asked) not freshly grated. This is not Italian food-it’s really not very good food from nice Italian people. On the way out the door, I had a look at the line of ingredients that had been poured from some bulk cans into plastic bin-these were the pizza toppings. People who rave about the pizza here are either tourists who come from places where Pizza Hut is considered good or have been eating jamon and sobrasada on dry bread for enough days on vacation here that ANY food with mild flavor is a welcome treat. When a Coca Cola floating upon a single ice cube is the best part of the meal, we have a problem. Save your money, buy a frozen pizza from Es Paladar, put on a movie at home and...

This is without doubt the worst Italian restaurant we have eaten at. We arrived at 7pm to be told they didn't open until 7:30pm so we went for a walk and returned. There were four of us and we ordered two pasta dishes and two pizzas and a garlic bread to start. About 4 other tables that arrived after us were all served before us...? The pasta dishes arrived and were eaten. No sign of the pizzas. Later the two pizzas arrived. The starter never arrived. The waitress said nothing but just crossed it off our bill. Their system is shambolic and random. Someone who arrived after us ordered 6 take away pizzas was served their pizzas before us. There is one large and very noisy echoing room with little ambience (the waitress said she could not hear us place our orders for the noise). People waiting for takeaway with children stood around waiting and their children ran around playing. One couple who arrived and placed a takeaway order waited for 20 minutes and nothing happened so they gave up and left empty handed. The daughter who waitresses was wearing a sweatshirt saying "Too cute to care" and that said it all....

Pizzas are good. However, deserts are quite bad. We ordered a pistachio cake and was horrible. The owner asked for our opinion about the desert and I told him, he said it was homemade (he, in fact, said he made it). Then, we went inside to pay and saw the actual box of the cake they bought (he lied to us shamelessly). Overall, the staff are nice and friendly, pizzas are good, the owner was nice to me too, but lies about the product. The atmosphere is pretty calm, they mainly have British or foreign clientele due to the touristy location. It is not unreasonably pricey, but not cheap for a simple pizza (and not for the bad non-homemade desert we had either), maybe towards the expensive side considering it is just a pizza, but it was good. I am unsure whether I...