Niche Restaurant — Restaurant in San Juan

Not the best restaurant in Puerto Rico to me..

I went to a few Michelin stars restaurants that had a similar price list and an incredible culinary experience. It wasn’t the case at Niche unfortunately.

Seeing the reviews on that restaurant, I was expecting a lot. The food was okay but for the price, I felt like it just wasn’t good and special enough. More than that, it wasn’t memorable. The truffle soup was my favorite but there should be at least some pieces of truffle on the top! Not only truffle extract/oil .. Everything seems to be fresh, which is good. The presentation wasn’t incredible either even though I could tell they tried their best to make it look nice. The desert was .. very homemade? But very very far from the level and the presentation we were expecting once again for this price range.

The restaurant is very small, it probably have too many tables for the space which made me feel suffocating. If you’re claustrophobic I don’t think this restaurant is for you. It would probably need also less colors and a little bit of more light?

However, the service was very good, and the owner was such a nice man. I hope this honest review will help him to improve, and I hesitated posting it for a long time since he was one of the nicest owners I’ve met...

PLEASE READ: Niche is a small French restaurant inside of the Acacia Hotel in the Condado area of San Juan. The space is very small and intimate, which is perfect for a romantic dinner. The owner greets guests upon arriving, and describes the specials. We (two people) started with a Filet Mignon Carpaccio, which was delicious. The main courses took over an hour, however the Filet Mignon main dish was cooked to a medium rare, when I ordered a blue rare, and the lobster was overcooked as well. The owner tried to embarrass me by finding a picture of a rare steak on Google and waving it around the restaurant with his flashlight on to show me what he thought was a blue rare steak. When the second piece of meat was delivered, it was cooked correctly, but his ego got the best of him, and he made every effort to ignore our two-top table in this small restaurant. The server told us she asked him to comp a glass of wine, or the filet mignon, and he refused. He then came over to our table after we paid and told us to never return. Unfortunately, this poor gentleman is very lost in his culinary career, and is obviously very angry and sad, meaning he should probably stay away from the service industry, or dealing with...

I have dined all over. My family and I were hoping for much better here. What i found was mixed with generally more bad than good. When one dines at a restaurant that claims to be at the top...one expects the top in EVERY way. This restaurant instead offers what you see so often now....a superficial experience that has no substance and is truly not remarkable in any way. The food was no better than other restaurants in the area that are much more fun and way cheaper as well. Don't get me wrong, we have dined all over the world in some amazing places. Places that rank from the proverbial mom and pop establishment to the best of the best. This restaurant aspires to be the best. They have a beautiful restaurant but fall far far short on everything else. So in short, spend your money else where. There are so many amazing choices in San Juan. Ask a local for good advice btw...the locals (not foreigners who have moved there) are the friendliest most wonderful people in the world. They will direct you to some amazing places to eat in San Juan that offer experiences that you CANNOT get from anywhere else in the world, much less from a place like Niche that is pretending to be something...