Bar El Boya — Restaurant in San Bartolomé de Tirajana

Interesting experience shell we say… the other restaurant that we’d been recommended was open on Google but closed in actuality… So we ended up here, 2nd choice…You wait in the waiting area and push a bell in theory the waiter comes to collect you… there must’ve been three couples six people in the queue waiting perhaps bell was broken, finally the waiter came after seeing que and said why we hadn’t pushed bell… Great first impression…, then we were seated the restaurant was a third full thankfully we were seated by a waiters station as there appeared to be one taking the orders the other two were clearing tables and serving… so were able to get his attention fairly easily… The menu was quite strange although in multiple languages it was a photographic menu on paper like a tourist menu in particular Asian resorts… Anyway the food wasn’t too bad brought out in different times on sml plates tapas style… I had a local wine which was very nice the only couple of negative things / to point out that one of the fish dishes was frozen cod waiter mentioned and I being from New Zealand had ordered the mussels which were green lipped from New Zealand ( frozen ) not realising when I ordered… so I would say possibly a third of the menu was frozen and certainly not fresh as expected…. Anyway not a bird evening/ experience we suppose depending...

If Gran Canaria is my happy place, then Bar Playa El Boya is my happy, happy place! Best seafood ever! We have been coming here for every holiday in GC for the last 15 years and it has always been our favorite restaurant. The staff are quick and professional (the same guys for as long as we have been coming here), the food is excellent and reasonably priced, and the atmosphere is very relaxed and Canarian. The village of El Pajar itself is charming and the beach next door is pretty and quiet. The cement factory on the other side of the restaurant keeps this village from becoming a resort. If you would like to experience a local place right in the middle of the tourist coast, you could do no better. Be warned – on the weekends the place is flooded with locals, take a number for a table, grab a beer at the bar, and wait alongside...

Terrible service - stuff just doesn’t notice you and when they do, they’re rude and in a hurry, trying to get rid of you as fast as possible. The food is also rather bad - tried paella - it was way too soggy, giant squid was overcooked and too hard, red millet was at least not ruined, but also cooked absolutely plainly - no garlic, lemon, nothing. At first prices look very low, but considering small portion size and side dishes not included to any of the proteins, it’s really not cheap at all. They also provide souse and stone-hard beard for each table and charge for it regardless if you touched it. It was only 50 cent, so I decided not to argue, but it leaves...