Restaurante El Peñón — Restaurant in Salobreña

Wonderful place where we went during our stay in Salobrena right before the covid lock down...my children were very little back then and because the bizarre experience they lived through for the next few years afterwards, I thought they'd not remember much. However to my surprise when I recently mentioned Salobrena, they both immediately started to reminiscent about this restaurant we walked in to, where they ate whole fish and an octopus ! 😃 The memory was so vivid and so pleasant in their mind that I also instantly remembered all the details - the incredibly helpful waiter who helped us accommodate our very long list of allergies that my children suffered back then, who went above and beyond to make us feel absolutely welcomed and even entertained our children for a little while so that me and my husband could eat our dinner (I'm still immensely grateful about this 💐) The food was plentiful and simply delicious, fresh and bursting with flavour! 🍛

I decided to write this review from perspective of years as it was one of few places on my many travels that really struck such deep and unrivalled memories. I hope we'll go back sometime. Thank...

The worst dining experience I have had in recent years. Our reservation was at 9pm, a couple of the dishes we ordered came almost straight away and then we waited until 11pm for the remaining dishes (almost 2hrs) When the fish arrived at tasted rotten. My fish was also very undercooked. 2 dishes were supposed to come with roast potatoes but didn’t and when I asked they gave me a plate of chips/fries. To add to that me young nephew ordered the hamburger and it was no better than McDonald’s. All together a horrific experience. I felt so sorry for the waiters as it wasn’t there fault and they were visibly stressed. When I complained for the fourth time they said they would compensate us somehow and gave us a plate of random deserts. Hardly compensation. Such a shame as it’s a beautiful location and restaurant. Can’t help feeling like the owners are fuelled by greed. The restaurant clearly can’t deal with the amount of tables they have. What’s more is it’s far from cheap - the bill for four of us was £150. The owners need to take a long hard look at themselves....

Shame really. Could have been a wonderful experience. Plonked inside the restaurant when Al fresco would have worked nicely for us, as the restaurant was empty. The waiters lack of English and our lack of Spanish was not a decent combination. However there was a English’s speaking waiter and rather then asign him to our table we had to make do. The place itself lacks a little bit of finesse. Menus A4 copies of paper held within multi plastics pockets with no description of the food, so no help there either to be had. We did attempt to gain some information on the choices on offer but that also proved to be difficult due to the language barrier. Overall the feeling was it was all a bit canteen like as a set up rather than a restaurant and the food itself was somewhat over priced for what you got- handful of chips at best and the meal came as it is, no chance to add anything or take anything away. Not a great experience but you can see it has quite a lot of potential if some time and effort was put into the running...