Forum Marbella Restaurants: The Golden Mile’s New Food Hall, Honestly Reviewed

Walk into Florentine and you understand the appeal immediately — marble everywhere, a mirrored staircase up to the rooftop, that theatrical 1970s-Italy energy they were clearly going for. It’s the biggest room in Forum by a distance, and on a warm evening with the terrace full, it’s genuinely one of the better atmospheres on the whole Golden Mile. I’ve had good nights here. The beef carpaccio with shaved truffle is the dish I keep going back for.

Where I have to be straight with you is on price. The signature pasta runs €32 before you even think about the €15 truffle add-on, a plain pizza starts at €26, and their caviar pizza is €92 — which, whatever the caviar, is a lot for a pizza. Portions haven’t always matched what’s on the bill, and I’ve had a couple of dishes arrive lukewarm on a busy night. Go for the room, the rooftop, and the carpaccio, and skip anything with a truffle or caviar supplement attached unless you’ve decided tonight’s the night to spend properly.

This is my favourite seat in Forum, no contest. Sit at the bar, order the lobster roll and a glass of something cold, and just let the room happen around you. It’s small and it doesn’t try to be everything — a tight menu of oysters, ceviche, tartare and that lobster roll, which is honestly the best version I’ve had on the Costa del Sol. By evening the lights drop and it turns into something closer to a speakeasy, which suits the space perfectly.

The pricing is proper Golden Mile — a lobster roll is €35, the full seafood platter €75, and caviar starts at €35 for the smallest portion and climbs fast from there. I’ve had nights where the lobster portion felt a touch mean for the price, so go in knowing you’re paying for the room and the intimacy as much as the food itself.

On its best night, Beast is the most exciting kitchen in Forum. Sit at the sushi counter, watch the chefs work, and the fish quality is obvious — this isn’t a generic hotel sushi menu, there’s real craft going into the rolls. I’ve had cocktails here that were as good as anything in Puerto Banús.

But I’ve also booked a table here and had my reservation not held, and I’ve paid €129 a head for a set menu on a night the room felt genuinely overcrowded for what it was designed to hold. This is the priciest dinner in Forum, and the least consistent. If you’re going, confirm your booking by phone the day before, and go with the expectation that the night could go either way.

Planta is where I actually want to eat in Forum, not just where I go to be seen. It runs the full day — I’ve had shakshuka here on a lazy Sunday morning and the raw pad Thai on a Tuesday lunch, and both were properly good. It’s the one menu in the complex that genuinely works whether you’re vegan, eating meat, or somewhere in between — nobody at the table has to compromise.

Prices sit around €25-40pp, which in Forum terms is a bargain. The Sunday “Brunch y Burbujas” buffet — waffles, a matcha fountain, bubbly, bubble tea for the kids — has become my go-to when friends are visiting and I want somewhere relaxed rather than a production.

Baccara is part grocery, part bar, and I use it as both. I pick up bread, cheese and something from the butcher counter when I’m hosting, and I sit by the fountain for a glass of cava when I’m not. The deli platter, eaten at the bar, is a proper little meal on its own.

The Golden Hour, 5-8pm daily, is the reason to build an evening around this place — Champagne, Cava, wine, beer and Swedish snacks, and none of it feels like it’s being marked up the way the flashier restaurants nearby do. It’s the calm one in Forum, and I mean that as a compliment.

Nybakat means “freshly baked” in Swedish, and it’s exactly that — sourdough, croissants, cinnamon buns, all made from scratch. I brought a “Special” Swedish friend of mine here once to get an honest verdict, and she rates the pastries as genuinely top level — proper Swedish quality, not a tourist version of it. Coming from an Italian, that’s saying something, but I’ll say it anyway: the coffee here is excellent. It’s my first stop most mornings I’m at Forum, a cinnamon bun and a seat where nobody’s trying to sell me a rooftop experience.

2 pastries and 2 coffees here rarely tops €15, and I genuinely can’t think of a visit where anything’s gone wrong. If you want Forum without the theatre, this is where I’d send you first.

Tamra opened at Forum in June 2026, built around a tradition I hadn’t seen done properly anywhere else on the Mile: the date, paired with coffee, as the centre of the whole experience rather than an afterthought on a dessert menu. It’s the first genuinely different idea to land at Forum since it opened — everything else leans Italian, Scandinavian or broadly international, and this is the one concept built entirely around Middle Eastern coffee culture.

I’ve only been a handful of times so far, and I don’t think it’s fair to score it properly yet — a few months isn’t enough to know how it holds up once the novelty wears off. But the pace of the place is right, and it’s worth a stop if you want something genuinely different from the rest of Forum’s lineup.