Amy Shepheard
Google
A rather disappointing meal. The positives are that the food is innovative and well executed. They are doing some interesting things with local ingredients and there were a couple of stand-out dishes including the mares milk, sea cucumber, and salt baked skate wing which were fantastic. On the negative side the desserts were bland and forgettable. There were a lot of other negatives too, mainly to do with price and experience. We regularly eat at Michelin starred restaurants and for me a large part of the enjoyment of a high-end meal comes from the service and context in which it is served. We both felt that this was not good value for money especially considering that we found several other restaurants on the island with excellent tasting menus for a very reasonable €50-90 which were considerably more enjoyable and less pretentious, and with better food too. The atmosphere at MaDeCa is non-existent. You feel like you are in a hotel lobby with its bright light, awful outdated artwork and decor. The spaced out tables and lack of music made it feel very cold and empty, and while that is likely a COVID related precaution, it also detracted from the ambience. The servers were trying to be friendly but came across as overfamiliar/intrusive, they were also trying hard to be formal but making a lot of basic errors such as serving my husband before me. I would absolutely not care about this if it was an average restaurant, but when you are paying over €400 for a meal for 2 the expectations are of course a lot higher. It’s a shame because the food overall is quite good, but I wouldn’t come back.
