A1 Ambar Restaurant — Restaurant in Marbella

Honest Review of A1 AMBAR – Puerto Banús.

I visited A1 AMBAR in Puerto Banús with high hopes, given its prime location and modern styling. Unfortunately, while there are definite positives — including a capable chef and a lively atmosphere — the overall experience left much to be desired, largely due to poor service and what felt like a lack of leadership.

I sat down and ordered water right away, but it never arrived. After 10 minutes, I had to flag down a waiter again just to repeat the same order. Another 10 minutes passed before a different staff member came to take my food order. When I asked a basic question about the pasta, the language barrier made it impossible to get a clear answer. While I understand not everyone speaks English fluently, in a tourist-heavy destination like Puerto Banús, some level of communication should be expected.

I changed tables because of the wind and explained this to the waitress, but my food still arrived at the old table. The dish itself was quite nice — credit to the kitchen — although slightly tepid after the table confusion. It's clear the chef knows how to cook, but the front-of-house support is lacking.

Throughout the meal, no one offered bread, no one checked in to see how things were, and I wasn’t asked if I wanted another drink. I was offered condiments — one arrived, the other didn’t. I even overheard someone say they'd gone to fetch it from a store, but it never came. Parmesan was promised and never delivered. After I finished, they took away only part of my plate and cutlery. Then, for 30 minutes, no one approached me to offer dessert, check in, or ask if I needed anything else.

There are quite a few people working there, but many appeared inexperienced or uncertain. A lot of staff stood around inside while guests were clearly seated and waiting outside. The vibe suggests either there's no active manager or the management isn’t present or effective.

That said, I didn’t leave angry. The staff were friendly enough, the space has great potential, and the kitchen shows real promise. But the entire operation feels undercoordinated — like a team without a leader. With better management and staff training, this place could really shine. Until then, it’s more style than ssubstance.

For now there are better options next door. For this to really work it needs someone with skin in the game on site to manage people, explain what is required and train them. A restaurant that feels more let down by its owners than the team. Hopefully someone reads this so it doesn't shut down again and can finally reach its...

Absolute rip off of a restaurant. Very unpleasant experience. First off, no staff at all knew anything about the content of the menu..any question about menu was answered with “it’s a new restaurant/menu so will check with the chef”. Next the food took absolute ages to come through and lastly the biggest surprise was when we were about to pay the bill and noted “cubiertos” which was €6. I didn’t know what it meant so asked one of the staff members and his response was that’s cutlery and bread (that they served before our food arrived without asking..literally just one piece of bread with some butter). He then said it is very common for most restaurants in Spain to charge for this in Spain and in Italy. And then in a very condescending manner asked me “where do you come from?”. Now as a brown man he probably assumed I was Arab or Asian and probably came from subcontinent. I told him I came from (London) U.K. to which he didn’t say anything. I told him I have travelled up and down Spain (and Italy for that matter) but have not seen this charge anywhere and don’t think it’s as common a practice as he makes it out to be. I then looked up on Google while I was there about this charge and most websites make it very clear that it is an absolutely illegal charge by Spanish law. I asked another waiter if it is optional and he said it is charged by most “top restaurants”. I asked them to take this charge off as I am not happy to pay this and they did so reluctantly. I wouldn’t mind if they just added some sort of service charge or something but to just add charge for cutlery and bread which you got without asking AND to pretend that it is a common practice in Spain and to ask me “where I came from” in an attempt to somehow justify this charge, is what annoyed me slightly. Would definitely not be visiting again and would advise anyone to avoid as well..many many good/decent restaurants in Puerto Banus with much better...

1 star does not even justify our experience here.

Starters: Muscles came with no sauce at all, bland and chewy. Steak tartar was just raw meat blended with parmesan, nothing like your typical steak tartar with egg, bread, capers, mustard, etc

drinks: we ordered a bottle of still water, glass of red wine and a mojito to start. nothing wrong with the alcoholic drinks however the still water came in a glass bottle with no cups and once asked, it took 30mins for two glasses to come for it. then, halfway through eating our starters, the waiter attempted to take my barely drank mojito assuming it was “finished”. one water glass also had a very large piece of plastic wrapping in it, a huge safety hazzard for someone with younger children.

mains: my boyfriends pasta and side arrived first, we eat together but ended up having to wait 10+ minutes before asking a server where my pizza was which by that time his food had gotten cold. it was extremely quiet in the restaurant so did not expect such a wait. the food itself was bland and almost inedible. neither of us are fussy or like to waste food however the pizza was just pizza dough, cheese and a large piece of cream dumped in the middle attempting to mimic buffalo mozzarella. we ended up leaving our food and paying the £150 bill before leaving empty bellied.

the staff attitude was extremely poor aswell. we witnessed multiple moments of aggression towards other customers complaining as well as their inability to keep up with the 4 tables of customers in the restaurant.

I hate to leave a bad review but we were so disappointed to have had such an awful experience on one of our last days of holiday. Avoid this place...