Bar Restaurante Virgen del Carmen — Restaurant in Estepona

I come here often, it's my Local.

Great simple food, perfectly cooked and friendly staff, most from the same family.

Fish above all (although there is meat, too), which is why it's closed on Mondays; no fleet goes out on Sunday, so the wholesale fish market isn't open Monday dawn.

There's an inside dining room, cosy in winter and often cooler on baking summer midday than outside.

Right by the front door are a few tables for smokers mainly, just having drinks.

The nicest place is in the traffic-free square, under sun shades in summer, or sitting out in the spring or autumn sunshine. I've even eaten out there on a mild winter's day.

On warm summer evenings eating out in that pretty Plaza is a real delight.

But eating here always is a delight. Recently I had 18, yes eighteen, relatives visiting for the day. I talked to Isabel and we worked out a lovely menu of "raciones", like tapas but bigger helpings, and we had a fabulous meal that everyone loved.

Try it. You won't regret it!

P.S. The Covid procedures are good. Tables are well spaced, especially in the plaza, of course. QR code menu for ordering without touching menus.

Very happy indeed, feeling safe and well-looked-after here by the family. Very highly...

On a Sunday, when everyone wants to eat rice, they let you wait half an hour for a table (while you buy drinks from the bar, of course) then 20 minutes before they take your order. Finally, they then tell you that they won’t cook rice for you because you haven’t ordered it in advance. They advertise rice on their board outside the restaurant and in their menu, and no where does it say that you have to order it in advance.

How difficult would it be in this situation to make a portion of rice for customers who have been waiting almost an hour to be served? Or, if they don’t like cooking too much rice, to tell people waiting on a Sunday that they shouldn’t wait if they want rice? This is customer service at its worse.

The dishes that we did eat (because it was too late after the long wait to go anywhere else) were too salty and poorly seasoned. We weren’t offered a drink on the house as other customers were.

To sum up, this restaurant, despite its attractive location and potential, is best avoided at all costs. You can’t have a proper meal there unless you’ve ordered...

A RIB OFF!! To be avoided by all means!! This place served us scandalously overpriced mediocre quality food in awfully small portions. We politely complained to the owner, who met us with tons of impertinence. To give you an example about the food: A teeny tiny plate of one sliced tomato sprinkled with a spoonfull of canned tuna fish bought most likely from the nearest supermarket and tasting like nothing, really, costed us almost 8 euros (7,90 euros to be precise)! To sum it up: This place sells raciones in tapas size with a disgraceful attitude towards customers' polite complaints. A fundamentally dishonest and shameless business model designed solely to rib its clients off. Outrageous /...