La Table D'olivia - Saint-Martin-de-Ré

Olivia's lounge is the perfect place for tea time with its soft armchairs and its view of the hotel's interior garden. It is very pleasant for a drink and the menu offers tempting dishes

1st experience in a 5-star hotel. We went there with friends for breakfast only. Setting and soothing music. It was a great experience, as much for the taste of the pastries, yogurts, cheeses or freshly squeezed fruit juices. or for the service provided by a very pleasant and attentive person. Nice break. We recommend.

What a magnificent place! Located in a hotel, I had breakfast there. Warmly welcomed by warm and professional staff, I was able to enjoy a hearty breakfast. I recommend, everything was very good.

Our evening was pleasant but not the 5* experience I had expected. I felt rushed. On such a warm and beautiful evening I would have expected to be offered an aperitif in the garden but we were shown straight to our table and immediately given menus and the glasses of champagne we ordered. Rather than being left to peruse the menus and enjoy our drinks, our orders were taken, we were served some very delicious canapés and offered bread. Before we'd even finished our drinks we were asked to taste our wine choice. Perhaps as we were the first table to be seated the kitchen wanted to get started but the pace was far too fast for us to enjoy a special birthday dinner. The food was beautifully presented and excellent in parts, especially the artichokes accompanying the langoustines and the mushrooms with the guinea fowl, but overall my impression was of blandness rather than subtlety. The guinea fowl itself was not terribly hot and was probably cooked sous-vide leaving it with a flaccid skin in places which would have benefited from a quick flash in a hot pan. A lovely setting but the food disappointed, especially at these rather high prices.

We had an enjoyable dinner here on our last night at Hotel Toiras but felt the food, whilst good, was not in the top tier. The service was stretched very thin with just one waitress between all 6 or 7 tables for instance, we had on three occasions to get up, collect our wine bottle from a side table and refill our glasses and no one spotted this. The starter was a dumpling with spider crab and other bits and pieces. It arrived looking nothing like a dumpling, and the delicious local spider crab was in small blotches. Tasted nice, looked rather uninspiring. The sea bass main served with white grapes was delicious, although perhaps it is just me but I find serving grape pips in the sauce off putting and I ended up removing them. Also, who likes soggy fish skin these days? The cheese was delicious and so was the deconstructed lemon tart. The wines had markups such that they were all priced at least 3.5 x cost which I find very sad. What a shame it has come to that.