This is a decent restaurant in the sleepy town of Portbou. It's situated with a view of the…read moreMediterranean. We tried some other places that actually served CANNED food. Luckily, this wasn't one of them. They stated on their menu that they prided themselves on using fresh ingredients and were inspired by the Mediterranean Sea. For the menu, we opted for the 21€ per person choice which allowed for a choice of starter, main and dessert as well as bread and mineral water. For the starter, I had the tuna tataki and my s.o. had the salmon and octopus salad. My starter simply had too much going on and the flavors clashed, the texture of the tuna was not exactly meaty, it was soft and strange, like eating a hunk of fat. I choked down 3 bites before I forced it on my s.o. who will eat almost anything, and it wasn't palatable for him either. The salad was more like a mixed lettuce salad with hunks of seafood instead of a salad predominately made of seafood itself, the flavor was ok. For the main course, my bar is as set pretty low based on the starters, but the pork tenderloin I ordered, it was worthy of five stars. Definitely less done than what I'm used to at home, but so deliciously tender, and seasoned well. It was served in some sort of jazzed up sweet potato purée and topped with a fig sauce, the flavors worked a symphony in my mouth. The flavors vaguely reminded me of Thanksgiving, my s.o. thought there was a slight flavor of coconut curry. We both agreed it was delish. S.O. got the Iberian pork and rice dish, served in a shallow ceramic/clay dish. The rice was undercooked and tasted ok (like it was seasoned with a flavor packet), the pork chunks were more bone than meat. For dessert, s.o. got the chocolate lava cake with orange cream, it was about the size of 1/3 cup and it was chocolatey and delicious. I got the Catalan cream which was a lightly flavored whipped cream served in a champagne glass, layered with apples that didn't have much flavor and something that reminded me slightly of a crumble in a fruit crisp. Overall, it was light and pretty decent. We drank Clara which we've been told is a mixture of beer and lemon, so it's sweeter than beer with a very slight hoppy finish.
Now for the service. In Europe, I've become accustom to the much slower pace of service, however, this was painstakingly slow. There was one server and one bartender. The server was not efficient at all. She would go to a random table, take an order, disappear into the restaurant for a while and start the process again. Some people were waiting a very long time to have their order taken, it took us about 40 mins. There were about 10-12 tables total that filled over time, although there was no turnover needed for any of the tables. Eventually, reinforcement arrived to deliver food and clear the table. Service was pleasant enough, just slow even for Europe!
So out of five possible stars, minus one for the starters and minus one for the service. 3/5 stars.
