El Viejo Marino, located at Calle Maipu 229, Ushuaia, Argentina is an absolute MUST DO if you ever get close to Ushuaia!!! It has been famous for an exceptionally long time for its seafood offerings, especially its King Crab dishes.

“El Viejo Marino” translates as “Old Man of the Sea,” which was a proper term to be applied to the founder of this restaurant who had, for many years served as a captain of a crab fishing boat in the local waters. He opened this restaurant when he retired from the sea. It was said that each morning he visited his old colleagues at the dock to buy only the best crab in each day’s catch.

…..We had the pleasure of meeting him seven years ago, when we first visited Ushuaia and his restaurant.

At that time, El Viejo Marino was clearly a five-star world-class restaurant. Small and super crowded, its food was over-the-top delicious, especially their King Crab and Sea Bass dishes. All were from very fresh, high-quality ingredients and were priced far below what anyone would expect.

We believe that there has been slippage in the years since we were last there. We gather that from not only recent reviews on TA, but also from our own recent visit. The service in this very small, super-busy eatery was not at the extraordinary level we experienced seven years ago, and the prices were several multiples higher. For instance, the over-sized King Crab dinner was now approximately US$120.00 vs. mid-$20 back then. However, the food was still exceptionally good.

We also recognized that with a little common sense, we could have reduced our cost by nearly half, by ordering two normal-sized King Crab instead of the one over-sized one(a sign of business owner greed or is it market demand for an increasingly rare product?), or by ordering the pasta with King Crab dish or the Sea Bass dinner.

One additional observation – We recommend that North Americans use a major-bank credit card and charge the meal in Argentinian pesos. We found that the exchange rate had changed by nearly 10% in the four days it took for the charge to be processed. (Yes, inflation IS that bad in Argentina.

Bottom line – We still most definitely recommend, El Viejo Marino!

I was expecting a great experience based on excellent reviews, but was disappointed. The place was packed and service was inattentive and slow, and the food quality was subpar and poorly presented my experience didn’t match the high praise.

Over hyped and disappointing. Unfriendly service, overpriced small crab, paella was terrible, uncle Ben type rice. 120000 pesos / $110 of crab that I could’ve eaten a much bigger one for less in the States or another country.
I think this place was good before and then it got to the heads of the staff that now they take customers for granted. Rude and unwelcoming which made the experience more unpleasant.
I do not recommend eating here even if there was not a wait. You will feel like you wasted your time and money after dining here!

Crab dish was really small, the crab was very flavourless and dull and the side rice was hard and not very good. Seafood soup was just ok. Black hake was well cooked. This plus beer plus water was £72 which is definitely not worth it especially considering the place which is not extremely cosy or welcoming.
The experience was not great and I would not recommend this place :-(

This is the local restaurant with original ( not a posh ) atmosphere. Food is very good and service nice and helpful ( the charge my phone). Truly recommend.