13. August 2010: Restaurant de la Plage

The Restaurant de la Plage is located in the little town of Saint-Sauveur on the island. The town is quite central to the island and reachable with a 10 minutes bike-ride from either La Croix or Port Joinville. Other than that, there’s a bus going there too but it stops running around 7pm, or you can access it by using a car.

The whole town is designed in a way like you know it from little Greek islands – everything is held in lightblue and white. Therefore, the restaurant looks already appealing from the outside. The picture doesn’t change at all from the inside. The place is clean, spacey, orderly and still gives you a very comfortable feeling.

We had our table reserved for 10pm but still had to wait 20 minutes until our table finally was free. Making the time go by is bearable but it’s very unpleasant if you make a reservation and you still have to wait in order for your table to be seated at. The waitress friendly talking-wise but there is a lot of improvement in her behaviour of service. Her actions don’t show friendliness in behaviour. Furthermore, we’ve ordered a bottle of sparkling water to drink – it has never arrived at our table. If you’re not capable of memorizing what your customers order, write it down!

There’s quite a nice choice of different dishes on the menu. I went for a salad with different smoked fishes (8.50 EUR) which was very good. The selection of different fishes as well as the way they were prepared was outstanding. Only the salmon wasn’t the one to top it all in taste.

As a main dish I’ve had a “Tournedos” (beef filet) with a pepper sauce and potatoes (18 EUR). The beef filet was perfectly cooked medium as requested, on the other hand, it was somewhat disappoiting in taste. The pepper sauce was really good but I figured it’s the wrong place to be on an island and to eat meat – you should definitely go for the fish (friend’s of mine had fish and they loved it).

What was a bit distracting was that we didn’t get a new fork from the starter to the main dish but were told to re-use our fork. Not that this is a problem in general but it’s somehow just not right.

As I was a bit disappointed of the main course I had thought of taking a typical French dish as a desert: macarons. Well, don’t do it! It’s not worth it. I’ve had way better macarons in London, UK at Café Paul @Tower of London. Especially as they charge 1.83 EUR per Macaron and bring you a total of three macarons at your table is an insult!

Maybe I haven’t picked the best menu to judge on the restaurant – as my friends really loved it. Personally, I must say, I wouldn’t really recommend going there. Although the atmosphere is nice and the starter with the smoked fishes was really great, the service has lots of room for improvement, the dishes – unless you eat fish – are only average and the price-performance ratio definitely isn’t good in my opinion.

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Contact Details:

Restaurant de la Plage

Rue Notre Dame de la Blanche 2

85350 Ile d’Yeu (F)

Tel.: +33 2 51 58 95 33

E-Mail: lerestaurantdelaplage@hotmail.fr

About the Author: Sven

I started the blog in October 2009, while living in Milan which I definitely consider to be one of the food capitals of the world. I was in touch with food since my early childhood (as my father is a former chef). Whenever I can, I travel the world to discover new places, to meet people but mostly to try local dishes and to find hidden gems! If you know a place worth going, please drop a line to: info@thediningexperience.org. Currently, I am a member of the following food-related associations: Chevalier @Chaîne des Rôtisseurs Zurich-Ville; Membre Gourmet Dégustateur @Ordre Mondial des Gourmets Dégustateurs [OMGD]; Gesellschafter @Goldener Fisch and Member @Slowfood Convivium Zurich City.