Went to Onda Sea restaurant last night with friends and can only sum up our experience by: "NEVER AGAIN".
It started by us coming 10 mins later than our friends, asking the headwaiter if our friends had already arrived. He answered yes & pointed to somewhere in the back of the restaurant, obviously not willing to guide us to our table. He was not even considering asking us if he should take our coats (the wardrobe being next to the headwaiters table) - as my husband hinted with "can we hang up our coats" he only replied "sure" without taking the hint. Well, not a great start into an evening in a restaurant that claims to be in the upper league in Oslo.
After we've found our place at our table, we've started looking at the menus ourselves, until a waiter finally passed by to ask us what we wanted to drink about 20 mins later ... the time by then was 9.00 ppm, and the restaurant was far from being full ... as we asked to get some water first, they returned another 15 mins later with some water, and asking for our orders.
As this was our first possibility to ask about today's menu (usually the waiter is supposed to tell you about right away in such restaurants) - which our waiter didn't know properly. He knew it was either salmon or pheasant, but couldn't answer any of the questions on how the fish or pheasant was cooked or what the side dishes were. Had to get the written menu paper ... then we were left alone again for another 15 mins before we finally order. Well, apart from the fact that the waiter didn't talk or understand Norwegian (Oslo is in Norway .. fyi), and neither proper English ... When we wanted to order our turbot he told us that this was not available today (great, would have been an important info at the time when he distributed the menu or told us about today's specialties ...).
So, we finally ordered about 50 mins after getting seated, not being offered an aperitif ... the first course (øysters and crab salad - where the waiter again got our orders wrong) came after another 30 mins ... and we were left waiting another 35 mins after having finished our first course before the main course came ...
The food was ok, but not really extraordinary, and after the main course we never were asked for some coffee or dessert, or more drinks ... felt like those guys had made enough money that night and were happy for us to leave ...
Funny enough we were not the only customers to complain that night .. neighbour table with 10 persons was complaining as well ... headwaiter couldn't even communicate properly with them (again, neither Norwegian nor English worked ... very poor).
So my take away from this night: Onda seems to be too rich & famous to care about their customers, they don't care at all ... and if they don't get better at service even their brand and great location won't help anymore.
My advice: spend your money elsewhere!!! read more