Côté Mer Review

Côté Mer is a restaurant located in front of the beach of the city of Etretat, known for its cliffs, which are absolutely amazing.

The restaurant is quite busy and located in front of the beach. We’ll see in this review if it’s a restaurant you should try or pass.

The location

The location is quite special. It’s in front of the beach of Etretat, which is one of the most beautiful spots to admire the sea and cliffs in France.

Etretat is located in the north of France, somewhere between Fécamp and Le Havre. So no matter how good the restaurant is, this place will most probably always be busy during the high season.

The restaurant is black and has a beautiful design reminiscent of a boat. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the opportunity to check inside the restaurant, and to be honest, the main attraction is located outside in front of it.

The terrace is fairly large; it can accommodate perhaps around 50 chairs, and it has glass to shield you from the wind while eating. The view is quite nice, and you can easily see the cliffs from here.

The menu

To be fair, we haven’t been served the menu so we don’t have any picture of it and don’t have any idea about its content.

We’ll just use a picture of one found on the Internet, so we can’t really guarantee its the current one.

This place is open all day, so it’s also a restaurant where you can have a drink and have some appetizers.

To be very concise, the restaurant is offering some traditional brasserie-type food but, of course, some local seafood as well. I think if we had seen the menu, we would have chosen differently.

The seafood platter actually seems to be tempting, and they are also selling some crepes; it’s the specialty of these regions after all.

Our experience

We’ll be as straight and direct as possible; as Asians, we didn’t really feel welcome here at the beginning. We weren’t served any menu, and all the tables and customers that came after us were already ordering their food.

We go to the restaurant often, and for us, it’s obvious that something feels wrong. Now maybe we are being paranoid, but to be fair, in five experiences during this holiday, we received a similar treatment. So some of them have to be real.

After a while, we were treated normally; they brought us the food, the drinks, and even a basket of bread with a bottle of tap water.

Three of us ordered the same dish, mussels with fries. The food was decent, but nothing special; the mussels were small; perhaps it was not the season, as I believe. But the taste of the Marinière style wasn’t particularly tasty either.

To give you an example, the ones we ate at the Franchise Léon de Bruxelles were much better. The fries were also all right, but nothing special.

Perhaps we didn’t try the dishes that taste good in this restaurant, but at the same time, many other tables ordered the mussels as well.

Verdict

7.0 out of 10.

If Côté mer benefits from the perfect location, perhaps this is the reason why they don’t need to surpass themselves when it comes to service or food.

Don’t misunderstand me; the food is decent but nothing special, especially being on the edge of a beach. At least the meals are affordable, especially for the location.

I really think that there are other restaurants better in the area; LHuitrière, for example, looks like a real restaurant that has been here for a while. It’s more expensive, but if you are looking for delicious food, perhaps this is the place you should try.