La Tapa — Restaurant in Saint John

The view, the food and the service make for an unforgettable dining experience. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable. Our first visit - we sat at the bar last minute and had a variety of wonderful small plates The dishes are creative and flavorful. The cocktails are also amazing and well executed. We enjoyed the restaurant so much that on our next stay a month later - we brought our teen in for dinner. She immediately noticed the IG Photo opportunities a nod to the design team from our teen. ;) The restaurant was really full - yet our server made it seem like she was only waiting on us and was calm and took time with us making sure we were happy. I was unfamiliar with the wine list and she asked me a few questions then brought me 2 different whites to try. This might seem trivial but there were soooo many guests in the restaurant and she could have easily just quickly suggested something and bring it - but she instead provided a wine tasting. She never made us feel rushed and she was well versed of the menu and suggested several dishes. We had the Con Pan with 3 sauces and also tried the butter and olive oil. omg, we should have stopped with the bread but its all soooooo good. If you only have this and wine you will leave very happy. We split the gorgonzola caesar and it was HUGE but we still ate every bite. I ordered the yellowfin tuna for main course and it was delicious... like every single thing on the plate - all the ingredients burst with flavor and texture. I requested a box for left overs and it made for an amazing (cold) lunch the next day. We were full and skipped dessert but our teen suggested we return the following night for just dessert and we did. The flourless chocolate cake and apple tarte tatin did not disappoint. We sat at the bar and the bartender remembered us from our last trip. She is genuinely friendly and pours fabulous cocktails. If you enjoy innovative cooking, creative mixology with bar none service in a beautiful setting - try La Tapa. So happy we were able to experience this little...

Food was excellent! Five star for a little island.

Unfortunately, the service was the polar opposite. *Our server was not educated by the kitchen about the ingredients she had written down for her plate explanations. *Our server says to us while ordering our first two tapas, “Is that all you are getting? The chef wanted you to order all of our tapas at once”. What?! *Between our two orders of a tapas each, we sat at the table for more than ten minutes with no food or drinks while our carafe of sangria sat at the bar wait station. *and while waiting for our dessert, we watched our server fail at opening a bottle of wine and have to leave the floor to get another server to open the bottle. This caused our dessert order to take even longer than the time between our first and second tapas orders.

The knock out blow was delivered by the hostess. We had just received our receipt (our check was over $100 per person) and were readying to leave. The hostess came over to “ask us how our meal had been”. We were politely extolling the virtues of our food and refrained from mentioning our negatives when the hostess interrupts us and asks us to leave asap because they had another group coming in and needed our table! We had a nice table, on the wall with the sand and Cruz Bay just beyond. However, there were many tables (not on the outside wall) available just inside of ours.

I have worked in almost every position within a restaurant aside from owning one. It is NEVER okay to ask a customer to leave because they need the table for...

I do not like to have to write this but this place needs help or they will go down quick! It was our worst meal in St. John. First impression was the Spanish man at the host stand. We asked if we needed reservations and he asked for when, when my husband said if at all possible for tonight and he ignored him and went directly to the ppl behind us. We had to wait until he decided he had time for us and I asked him again about tonight so he said a time and we came back. We sat at the bar, we noticed there was one bartender named Margo and the place was slammed. She looked so stressed and overwhelmed! We could feel that and you could cut the energy with a knife. My husband asked if we could leave because it felt off in there starting with the host. Margo came over so we decided to give it a shot. We ordered the lobster and bacalao croquettes and the octopus. My croquettes were cold, completely covered in this tarragon sauce that was all you could taste, not balanced at all! The octopus was cut up in small pieces and was tiny, had too many flavors and you couldn't taste the actual octopus, over kill just awful. We had our drinks and left as quickly as we could because Margo was so busy we couldn't even tell her about the food, she could barely look up. The place is pretty and that is all the...