Miramar Raw Bar and Tapas — Restaurant in Macon

Miramar is another one of those places - Macon has way too many - that look great, have an enticing menu, but the execution is lacking.

Here's what they get right: the ambiance is great. It's busy, it's a nice chic, but accessible decor, dark and chill, a mostly younger and diverse crowd, definitely inviting and good for a date night. The wine and beer lists are adequate and appropriately priced. The food portions are good, and it's good value - you're not getting gouged just because it's a more upscale vibe. I appreciate that the take out containers are paper-based and not plastic or polystyrene. Their ingredients are fresh and there are plenty of vegetables on the menu. Vegetarians will find enough choices and pescatarians will be able to order from most of the menu. The service is also good, with a bevy of young wait staff to take care of you and your order.

Here's what they can do better: the cocktails I've had were not great, so I stick to beer and wine now. Particularly disappointing was the Miramar Michelada which they thankfully removed from the menu. If you like sweeter cocktails there may be something for you, but I didn't find anything tempting. The food. There is only one thing I've had that was worth ordering again and even that I'd modify - the watermelon radish salad. It's beautiful and fresh and large, but not interesting enough to eat such a mass quantity. I would ask if I could get it with some grilled protein, probably fish. Then it would be a great meal. The deep fried roll was overcooked, so instead of having raw fish inside throughout, parts of it were completely cooked. The sauce does not work with it and makes it overly rich, when it really needs something to cut the heaviness of the batter. And the sauce was nothing that required much thought - it was just mayo mixed with some Sriracha or something. The same sauce comes with the roasted Brussels sprouts. They look beautiful, but are under-seasoned and rely on the sauce for any flavor. Again, little thought put into it. The flatbread is more like a cracker - really flat and hard. The dough should have some rise to it (after all, pizza is flatbread, too), but it's almost like they took some flour and water, shaped it into a long oval, threw some toppings on it, and called it a day. I had the Caprese flatbread. The pesto was nice, the cheese was good, but the tomatoes were unripe and the presentation was lacking. It was drizzled with some balsamic vinegar or glaze which overpowered the flavors and just didn't work with it. I understand that tomatoes are not in season, but if you can't source ripe tomatoes, don't offer this in the winter months. It could easily be replaced by something more seasonal. I also did not appreciate that they are serving non-sustainable seafood. No Atlantic salmon is MSC certified and I would never buy it and neither should Miramar.

To sum it all up, I will go back to Miramar because it's in my neighborhood, I like the vibe, they have lots of pescatarian choices, and the prices are reasonable for a nice restaurant. I can't recommend it, though. If my opinion changes in the future, I'll be sure to...

We gave Miramar a try. I really wasn’t that impressed. If you’re going to charge the prices that they charge, you’ve got to do it as good or better than what you can get on the coast. I ordered a bowl of she crab soup for starters that came out warm, almost room temperature, the flavor was ok but needed some spark. I wasn’t halfway through my soup when my entree arrived. This is very aggravating to me because now my food is cooling off while I’m trying to finish my warm soup. My entree was a pasta dish that was suppose to have shrimp, mussels and octopus in it. Here’s the nuts and bolts... Two peeled shrimp, 5 mussels and I think I saw 3 slivers of Octopus, in a weak red Sauce with some noodles. Very disappointed in this dish. As a person that loves seafood, I was hoping for something that made my taste buds explode. This wasn’t the dish. If I order a dish that says it has Octopus in it, I want to see pieces of Octopus. Several large pieces of Octopus. This dish lacked everything. Honestly this dish was nowhere near where it should of been and what it could have been. Appearance, flavor, and value were all lacking.

After my entree, the baked oysters arrived and I have to say had a great flavor, but.... they need to lighten up on the bread crumbs. It was overkill.The breadcrumbs over powered the entire experience, so once again another disappointment. My wife is a vegetarian so she ordered the baked broccoli, potatoes and a bowl of soup. The broccoli she said was ok, nothing spectacular, she said the soup was good, but the potatoes were nothing more than giant French fries that lacked any flavor and came at a price tag of $8. I actually took a bite of one of them... nothing! Just a soggy giant French fry. We had two mixed drinks that came with a price tag of $24.00 and at the end of the meal she was still hungry. My wife doesn’t eat a lot and she is very petite. For her to tell me to stop at a fast food restaurant on the way home, after I just paid $90+ for this meal is very disappointing. I personally don’t see this place making it, unless they change their game plan. I’m not saying this to be mean, but i personally feel this restaurant isn’t at the level that they advertise to be....

Overall a disappointing experience. First, we weren't sat with drink or wine menus, the server was unknowledgeable and stood around with lots of "Ums" and "Uhs" trying to describe the drink/wine lists to us rather than just getting us the menus, which I ended up going to get myself from the hostess stand. We ordered a bottle of red wine, which took the server a painfully long and awkward time to open. And then the wine was oxidized and tasted like vinegar, yet she kept pouring it. We ultimately sent it back. The manager, however, was awesome, handled things perfectly, and brought us a new bottle of wine that was wonderful. Next, we ordered a huge and not cheap seafood platter. The oysters were tiny--seriously, maybe the size of a lima bean. And the bowl of tiny scallops I'm pretty sure was the meat of rays, not real scallops--overdone and gross either way. About 20% of the mussels were closed and inedible, another 20% were stringy, fishy, and gross--I would think that a chef of a "high-end" seafood/tapas restaurant would pay attention to these things. Two things that were flawless were the lambchop lollipops and the pork belly, so keep up the good work there. This place has a lot of potential, but right now I have no desire to go back. Also, it's a lot louder than one would expect for...