As our readers know we don’t often review restaurants that are located within resorts. The primary reason for this is that our experiences to date have been (mostly) disappointing. This is primarily due to the fact that resorts are all to often trying to ‘please all people all the time’ which, more often than not, results in a HUGE menu catering for all tastes which is VERY difficult for the restaurant team to deliver with any form of subtlety or finesse. Often these menus are ‘nationality’ designed offering everything from French to Korean and everything in between.

While we have an aversion to review resort restaurants we thought we would give the South Palms a go. The South Palms is located on the eastern side of Panglao where the original Bohol Beach Club was sited. It is our understanding that the property was sold and split in two with South Palms taking over the southern end and the Bohol Beach Club being refurbished and holding the northern position.

The South Palms resort is beautifully located on a pristine white sandy beach. The restaurant is very large and nicely appointed commanding spectacular views of the beach. The service is excellent with well trained staff both at front of house as well as within the restaurant.

Our review was over lunch with an unusually large group of friends. This was a great opportunity to try a number of dishes. As mentioned the location is spectacular and the service professional, but unfortunately as we anticipated, the experience was let down by the food. Our orders ranged from sushi to pizza, Thai to European offerings as well as seafood (not sure why they call the restaurant a seafood restaurant).

I won’t go into the detail of each dish suffice to say that each dish was a poor reflection on what the original creators had conceived.

Resort owners must start to realise that if they want to ensure guests stay ‘in house’ and spend their hard earned cash on the resort’s food offerings they must start looking to quality. Just offering ok food won’t do in this competitive market. Resorts also have to realise that their chefs can’t possibly effectively prepare sushi one moment, tom yum goong the next while preparing pizzas and chicken adobo at the same time. Something has to give, either in quality (holding all the various ingredients on hand) or in taste not to mention price, which by the way South Palms is a tad overpriced.

We know there must be a good resort restaurant out there….We just need to keep looking.