Sal de Mar Restaurant & Rooftop Bar — Restaurant in Aguadilla

I give this restaurant two stars because the location and view are beautiful, the servers are polite, and the food is decent. However, the service is inefficient; slow and poor communication, plus front of house management was nowhere to be seen. That, combined with with mediocre food, makes for an unpleasant restaurant experience. I have been there a couple of times now. The first time I thought it was good enough, although it didn’t leave an outstanding impression. I returned a second time because it was one of the few open restaurants that day with available tables (maybe that was a warning). I made a reservation. When we arrived we had to wait 20+ minutes to be seated. They sat us, 30 minutes passed and no server had come back to offer us anything- not even water. I went to the bar, which only had 3 people seated, to see if I would have better luck there getting something to drink. A server came up to me and asked what I wanted, I told her, and she asked what table I was in (I was sitting at the bar at this point). I pointed to where I had been sitting with my husband and mother and she said she would be right with us. She came back 10 minutes later and apologized because no one had told her there were people sitting there (not sure why since the floor plan is super open and you can see the whole space easily if you just carefully glance over). She didn’t bring the drinks with her. Instead, she told us that the food would take at least an hour. It would have been nice to know that when we arrived, before we waited over 30 minutes just to put the order in. I asked her if they could at least bring us a fish broth a bit faster. I was with my elderly mom who really needed to eat something. She said she would try. She then brought the drinks. My cocktail was so sweet all I could taste was the sugar, it tasted like koolaid - not worth $9. I set it aside and was waiting for the server to tell her to bring a different drink but she took forever and eventually a runner took it. When I saw her again I asked for a glass of wine from their by the glass menu but she said they were only doing by the bottle. Their wine bottles were not that expensive. I just only drink one glass so I didn’t want to order one. They could open any of those wine bottles to sell it by the glass and still make money, not miss out on such an easy sale and leave a customer unsatisfied. I didn’t order any other drinks. The broth arrived within 15 minutes or so but it tasted more of salt than of fish. We couldn’t finish it because it had so much salt. No one came to ask us how it was so we set it aside and the runner took it. Almost an hour later the food arrived. Some of it was good (not great) and some of it was not good. The only reason it was “worth the wait” was because we were hungry. We finished eating and asked the server for the check. She walked away and 15 minutes later still hadn’t come back. I looked back and saw her cleaning tables and taking orders (did she forget?). I decided to get up and pay ok the way out (common in most restaurants on the island). I didn’t see her anywhere so I asked another server. She brought the ticket and the cocktail was on it. I told her what happened and she went to find the manager (so there was a manager - but were they hiding or couldn’t get out of the office to see how the night was going?). They took the drink out of the bill and the server apologized multiple times for the bad experience we had. She said they were just too full. I’ve worked in the restaurant industry for years. This is a problem of communication and cooperation between the staff and proper supervision from management. If you take reservations those are your priority. For example, they were seating walk ins when they couldn’t even handle their reservations. The staff seemed overwhelmed and not able to properly handle the volume. We weren’t offered anything to make the wait more bearable and even though they knew we had an unpleasant experience we weren’t offered anything more than an apology to make us want to give it...

So they have good reviews which is why we went here. We were seated on the first floor automatically even though upstairs appeared open with seats. We asked for the rooftop, kind of in their name right and told no. You do NOT want to sit on the first floor everyone blasting by with no mufflers or loud music ruins it. It also is super hot not in the air coned room. After the first round came we asked a different waitress who moved us upstairs. This was all asked in fluent Spanish both at the start and the second time. Now the food... The appetizers came almost normal speed spec late. The ceviche was good/really good everything else was slightly over fried with one item exploded and just an empty shell which was served. We let our waitress know and she said she'd tell the kitchen. Slow forward at least an hour later to the dinners. A grilled fish sandwich was good decent sized portion with fries. Grilled grouper (I thought might of been pan fried) totally over cooked and super salty with raw crunch pan cooked papas. Other dinner had the same raw potatoes served as well. The waitress never ever stopped by to ask us for drinks we had to flag her each time also did the trick of asking for water giving bottled. We opened them cause service was so bad who knew when we'd see her again. Other tables were nagging her as well but they only waited half as long as us. I am not sure we had this because we left the original waitress's section but service did not exist on our trip for all of the rooftop. We would of had at least two more rounds if we had a waitress wait on us. We were never told the whole kitchen went home and our waitress was making our entire meal. Nothing was offered for our 1.5 hour wait for apps and dinner. My over cooked fish and raw potatoes were comped and it didn't have to ask but still I will not come here again for food. I didn't expect great service just some type of service for a beach front bar with good reviews. One take away do not sit downstairs and have the ceviche otherwise you're on your own. To flag a waitress and get properly cooked fish, at a beach bar...

Avoid due to disorganized and incompetent kitchen and poor hospitality. The menu is expansive and beyond their ability. Getting food was a three hour ordeal that was ultimately unsatisfactory.

It took 15 minutes to take drink and appetizer orders for our group of seven. Kids juices did not arrive for 30 min. Fried appetizers arrived cold and oily. We had to beg for the adults’ drinks three times and it took 60 min. At 90 min, the kitchen was just starting to realize they didn’t have ingredients for our orders so we had to order again.

When we complained to the manager, they put a rush on our food. By this point, all the tables arriving after us had eaten and left. The youngest kid in our group was melting down, and at 2:15 hours we got up to leave but they starting rushed our food out one dish at a time to prevent that. The El Merullo (fish dish) was overcooked to texture of rubber. The temperature on both steaks was way off.

Our check included multiple items that never arrived. When we complained to the manager about not wanting to pay for the nearly inedible food items (we did not eat) and missing items, she took 10% off those items after making us look like the bad guys and another long delay, she somehow added more bottles of water we never ordered, and then hid in the back.

Ultimately, I had to negotiate with a waitress who wasn’t our server or the manager to pay for what we ate because they wouldn’t comp anything, not even phantom drinks and food that didn’t arrive or was raw.

Women’s’ bathroom was closed early on because someone vomited and no one on staff wanted to clean it. The view is...