Asmani Restaurant — Restaurant in Muratpaşa

Avoid this place if you don’t speak Turkish; otherwise, they’ll ruin your evening!!

Last Saturday, on 12/10/24 my friend and I decided to visit Asmani, the restaurant on top of Hotel Akar. When we arrived, we were greeted by a hostess named ELMAS. Instead of greeting us right away, she looked me up and down. I asked her, “Good evening, do you have any tables available for the two of us?” Her immediate response was, “No, we’re fully booked.” I was surprised because I looked around, and the restaurant was almost empty, with only two people inside. I asked again, “Are you sure you don’t have any tables?” She gave me an angry look and repeated, “I told you, we don’t have tables available.” I explained that we were told by reception that no reservation was needed and that we were interested in both food and drinks. At this point, she said, “The bar is full, but maybe I can find something in the restaurant.” why she hadn’t clarified earlier if we wanted drinks or food, which would have saved some confusion. She asked for my name, and with an angry expression, she spoke to her colleague in Turkish, which I believe was just to seat us.

We were offered a table inside, despite many empty tables outside. Elmas then spoke to the waiter, and after that, the waiter came over, gave us the menu, and disappeared. The atmosphere was weird, and my friend felt uncomfortable, but I was hungry and really wanted to try the sushi, so we decided to stay.

However, after 15 minutes, no one had even come to take our drink order. The restaurant was clearly not busy, but it seemed like the waiter had been instructed by the hostess not to serve us. After 20 minutes of waiting and watching them doing nothing, we decided to leave. On our way to the lift, I asked another staff member at the front desk for the hostess’ name. She was hesitant to provide it, but I insisted, explaining that I wanted to make a formal complaint due to the hostess’ inappropriate behavior. Eventually, she wrote the name down for me.

We then went to the guest service desk in the Akar Hotel to share our feedback. The two lovely ladies at the desk listened to our concerns. Since the restaurant and bar are part of the hotel, it reflects poorly on the hotel’s brand when things go wrong. One of the ladies kindly offered to take us upstairs to speak with the manager. We agreed, though by this point, we had already missed the sunset, which was the main reason we went to the restaurant in the first place.

We waited about 10 to 15 minutes for the manager, who didn’t seem very interested in hearing the details of our complaint. He simply said, “Let me find you a table.” I hoped they would make up for the earlier inconvenience and help improve our evening. We ordered sushi and cocktails, but when the bill came, there was no discount or offer of a complimentary drink, despite the poor service we had experienced.

I approached the waiter again and explained that we had spoken to the manager about the unpleasant experience and were expecting at least a discount or a free cocktail. The waiter seemed confused but went to speak with the manager. When he returned, he had manually written a 400 lira discount on the bill, which didn’t even cover the cost of one cocktail (which was 610 lira). I pointed this out to him and asked to speak to the manager again.

The manager came over with an angry expression, and when I mentioned we expected at least one free drink for the inconvenience, he replied angrily, “You have to pay the bill. I helped you find a table.” I found this behavior appalling. I live in London and have never experienced such treatment at any restaurant. We paid the bill and left.

I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone. The view wasn’t that impressive, the atmosphere was uncomfortable, and the service was terrible. There are plenty of great places in Antalya where you can enjoy your evening without dealing with such...

Some years ago I was doing a lot of traveling to Japan, made some 26 trips to Japan in 5 years, that I became not exactly a connoisseur of sushi but ate at some really famous and expensive places. There was one in Osaka, near the Kansai Airport, that I dragged my guide/ chaperone/fixer/ colleague from Yamaha Semiconductor, Ishii-san to eat a simple sushi dinner before I headed to the airport to take the plane back to San Francisco. We had a simple sushi dinner and I think I had only one beer. The bill came out to be some 270 dollars, and the year was 1997. Ouch. I heard later that when Ishii-san turned in his expense report; he got reprimanded and heard a mouthful from his boss. So, the pursuit of sushi can be expensive. But if you are a big fan and living in Kalkan with very limited options for a variety of foods, mostly kebabs and poorly made attempts of cuisine, we took our chances and made the reservations at Asmani for a quick sushi dinner before the opera at Antalya State Opera performance of the Madame Butterfly. To much of our delight, salmon sashimi and the sushi moriawase turned out to be tasty, nice and crisp, filling and the best part did not break the bank. In fact, it was very reasonable, 100 and 200 TL, respectively. The Urla chardonnay was a nice accompaniment to the plates, and the waiters were charming, talkative, rounding the affair to be certainly a pleasant one. Wasabi was a nice generous heap that lasted until the very end, yet a more fresh wasabi would have been really the signature to the entire picture. The only negative aspect was that we were seated near the entrance to the balcony, which saw a lot of foot traffic not only by the customers but the staff as well, frantically hurrying back and forth for reasons unknown. Overall, it is worth a visit. The sushi we tasted was of great value, the ambiance was pleasant and Akra and the owner company Barut continue to impress us as hotel guests and now as its restaurant...

It is a place known for being luxurious and beautiful in Antalya and it was my first visit. Unfortunately, I saw that it was a choice far below my expectations. Even though we booked a nice table on the terrace, they told us there was no room and we had to wait 10 minutes for another table. Since the table they gave us wasn't close to what we wanted, we chose the interior and sat there. The waiters were very attentive and sweet, there is nothing to say about it. But what was that menu? There is no pasta option, if you say let's buy meat, there is nothing that interests you, we lost our appetite while we were thinking. We decided to have bruschetta to share and lamb meat with onions as a main course. Bruschetta definitely had to come ready. In this way, it was like tapas I prepare at home, but it was still a good experience, I can't say it was bad. The ingredients were delicious, we especially loved the olive paste and yoghurt appetizer. About the main course lamb was perfect we really enjoyed it, but onions? I would have expected a salad or at least mashed potatoes. But it only came with onions cooked in ball shape and the presentation was poor. Even though I didn't find it good in terms of price and performance, I liked that it was luxurious and it was nice to...