La Crema Tapas & Chocolate — Restaurant in Alys Beach

This was a turnaround story. Stopped by for lunch to enjoy the fantastic although slightly windy outdoor seating. We ordered drinks, my wife chose a standard margarita while I went for the Mango Tango, an apparent mango/tequila concoction. Oh. My.

The Mango Tango is literally one of my top 4 outside the house cocktails. Of all time. Wonderful, refreshing, and as a regular intermittent faster working on a 18 hour stretch, it hit just the right spot.

We ordered the Serrano Wrapped figs (as an appetizer) and a dish for each of the 3 of us as a main course. We asked if the app could come out first and was told that because it was a tapas bar, everything would come at once. Ok, no biggie.

Then along comes the Serrano Figs, by themselves. Ok. They were FANTASTIC. 10 minutes later my son’s chicken strips arrive. Ok. Another 10 minutes pass and my wife’s fish tacos come out. She waited a bit and finally started on them before the wind cooled them too much.

We waited. And we waited. Finally we overhear a nearby table telling their much more present waitress that although they didn’t order the Enfuego Chicken, their kids loved it and asked to make sure they were charged for it. I spoke up and said, that was probably my order but since our waitress hadn’t been around in a bit she wouldn’t know.

Finally our MIA waitress came by and offered to put in another order. At this point we had been sitting at the table for close to an hour so I politely declined and asked for the check even though I was now at 19 hours with no food 🙁. Got the check, paid, and right as we were about to leave, the GM (Andrew) popped by and asked if he could get my chicken for me, on the house…I declined but my wife made me feel guilty, so I said ok, although I would greatly prefer another Mango Tango instead. He brought my drink along with an order of complementary Steak Tostadas, and my missing Enfuego Chicken. Absolutely the best food ever. Don’t miss that - the food here is AWESOME. Andrew’s concern turned a disaster into one of our best and most memorable meals of Spring Break 2022. And he was the creator of the Mango Tango. Definitely deserves a raise!

Sorry for the long story but bottom line is this is a 5 star place all day long. Well...

Today was my family’s second time eating at this restaurant. We traveled from Alabama to come eat here because we really enjoyed the food the last time we stayed in Rosemary Beach. The first time eating here was pleasant and the food was delicious but this second time was not so great. Our waiter Hector came over to the table asking our order so me, my wife, and son told him what we wanted then he proceeded to ask did me and my wife want drinks other than water, so we thought about it and he suggested the margaritas so he got pushy with the order and went and got the margaritas after checking our IDs. He brings the drinks out and he starts saying he remembers me from the last time and I know that was a lie because our server was a woman and I’ve never encountered this man before. As he say he remembers us he then asks us what did we have for dessert the last time because he remembers we had dessert. That was another lie because we’re not crazy about sweets so I figured that was reverse psychology to make us order a dessert but we just brushed him off. We payed for our order then we proceeded to leave and didn’t think much of it, as we walked around the area for a while sight seeing we walked back by the restaurant while leaving out. Hector comes running out of the restaurant telling us we didn’t pay him a tip and that maybe I can write it out on the ticket how much I wanna tip him and that maybe I got confused about the 20% for the to go orders automatically being taken out. My wife then asks him can it be taken out on another card because we were so uncomfortable at this point so she just wanted to calm the issue. This restaurant has great food and for the price of $134 it was worth it but I don’t expect to get chased downed to pay a tip to someone who was pushy to us the whole time while we just wanted to enjoy our food. That really put a bad taste in my mouth and I expect to be harassed now while just trying...

My husband and I were very excited about trying this restaurant to celebrate our anniversary, but it ended up being largely disappointing. I will start with the good: the cocktails were decent and the seafood paella was pretty good but not worth the $25 price tag. The rest of the meal was a massive let down. We got the cheese fondue appetizer and it is literally just a pile of salad croutons and some melted cheese that was barely a step up from store bought queso. I typically love fondue, but this tasted like somebody trying to make fondue with whatever they had in the fridge and without any knowledge of creating good flavor. The next item we got was the Malaga shrimp which was terrible. It sounded delicious on the menu, but what was served was three little toast pieces with overdone shrimp and covered with an absolute mountain of soggy spinach. Seriously the amount of spinach was absolutely absurd, not to mention how unappetizing the flavors were. Additionally, because there was an abundance of wet spinach the toast pieces were a soggy mess. Desperately looking for something to eat and enjoy we tried the enfuego chicken which was mid at best, and very stringy. We decided to give the OMG cookie sandwich a go for dessert, thinking how could you go wrong with chocolate cookies and an espresso cream... unfortunately this was a disappointment as well. The cookies were overdone and lacked any depth of flavor other than overly sweet chocolate and the espresso cream filling was just a glorified cream cheese icing without even a detectable hint of espresso. For the price tag of this restaurant we expected the food to demonstrate an understanding of flavor and textures, but it was honestly not good. I have had better food at an Applebee's. The service was ok, not super attentive but she did take off the Malaga shrimp which we appreciated. All that to say, there are much better places to spend your money and enjoy a...