L'antica Isola - LA MADDALENA

Exquisite restaurant within the hotel Ma&Ma. Beautiful location where you can sit inside or outside along the pool. Perfect service, highly professional staff and delicious food prepared by chef Simeoni. Well balanced wine list but we had the chance to taste some local wines accompanying a 'special ' menu prepared to celebrate the patron saint Mary Magdalena. Grazie al team de ristorante L 'Antica Isola. Pietro (223)

A 5* hotel tends to have a Posh restaurant, too posh for me. My wife made me put on a clean shirt and I immediately dropped a sloppy prawn down the front. Fortunately it was dark apart from a rather charming decorative bowl of fairy lights You can eat inside, where all the tables are laid nicely, but nobody wants to. We sit outside by the pool. Menus arrive. It is quite impossible to read them until the waitress brings a little LED reading light. I shouldn't have left my mobile in the room They have a set menu, 45€ per head, four courses it's advertised in the hotel but we had to ask for it Tuna salad. Celery. Gah! I hate celery. But because it was dark, I ate a piece. Gah! The tuna was nice though Fragola with seafood. Like a risotto but with what I thought was bulgur wheat instead of rice. Turn out that fragola is a local pasta, not bulgur wheat at all. Great chunks of prawn coated in tomato sauce. Be careful not to drop them down your shirt. Pork belly. Looked a bit lonely in the middle of the plate. Came with no side dishes, so I was finished ages before my date. It occurred to me later that maybe they forgot the contorni? Tasty but lonely Chocolate brownie with vanilla sauce. I don't usually eat this sort of thing but it was fine Nice bottle of local wine. 35€, cheapest one on the wine list. Impeccable service. So good that it I am quite prepared to believe that the pork belly wasn't meant to have accompaniments.

We stayed at the hotel and decided to eat at the restaurant. We were not disappointed as the different oils we were brought to try out the bread was a good indication of a restaurant with some reputation. I had a steak with and egg on top of a stack. The only disappointment was my partner wanted a dessert and on a night when the restaurant was not so busy they had run out of the particular dessert.

We had a complementary meal at L'Antica Isola as part of our package at the attached Ma&Ma hotel. I say attached, our table was on the path round the hotel swimming pool where just 90 minutes earlier we'd walked back to our room in our swimming gear. What we didn't expect, given this is the fine dining restaurant of a supposedly 5* hotel, was the thumping dance music from the DJ provided for diners' entertainment. It was just odd, with regular puzzled looks from fellow diners in his direction. He was just doing his job, but restaurant/hotel management must consider what the point of his being there was. It's a peaceful venue on a hill with gentle breezes next to a tranquil swimming pool acoustic guitar or a bit of lounge music would have been ideal. 2 days prior we had a nightcap at the adjacent pool bar and it was just as bad Douglas and his latin dance classes were happing next to dining tables. All rather odd. Ambiance aside, the food was decent. We had the 4 course tasting menu. The ham/smoked mozzarella starter was excellent, the pasta/mushroom/sausage pasta Primo was great, the pork main was very well done and the mousse dessert was fine. My partner had a main of battered seafood and this was poor mostly batter. For drinks we had a complementary bottle of rosé fizz that was alcoholic and cold, and all we really wanted at the time. All in all we had a decent meal, were glad of being close to our hotel room, but wouldn't make an effort to return going into La Maddalena town was our preference for all the other evenings. And watch out for the unwanted discotheque!!

We had the four course set menu. The food looked beautiful but lacked flavour. There was no seasoning offered on the tables and when I asked for some salt and pepper the waiter came and grounded some pepper over my steak. The staff were excellent but food definitely needs to be improved.