+: Tasty meat in copious quantities, just ok in quality.
-: NO salad bar, terrible fries, sanitary shortcomings, untrained and overworked staff.
Having friends over in Brussels, we decided to give a try to this new place on Place St. Catherine. We were a party of 4 adults and sat inside by the kitchen.
Firstly, unlike usual all-you-can-eat places elsewhere, there's no salad bar here. You just get some at the beginning of your meal and that's it. Ours didn't taste very fresh nor did it look original (the beans, for instance, looked like they came in a can) and it sure wasn't tasty. The starters consist of a platter of pintxos, although you better go and forget everything you know about pintxos and what they are supposed to look like. Pickles, anchovies and a slice of dried salami topped with a piece of baguette bread (which was no better than supermarket bread) in a brochette, complemented with a "pain a l'ail", same said bread but grilled in garlic mayo. Nothing special so far.
Once you're done, you opt for baked potato or fries. This is the first place in Belgium where we had cardboard-tasting fries!
Then comes the meat: juicy cuts of beef, porc, chicken, lamb, plus sausage, chicken drumsticks, dices of salmon and of some other fish (whose name in English the waiters ignored), shrimps and even pineapple! All of these grilled in slow-turning skewers, above a wood fire pit. The waiters move around from table to table with these huge skewers and a metal base, which they lay on your table in order to cut a slice.
Here comes another complaint: the service. All young lads with little training for what does require training, and, to top that off, overworked. Two times the waitersdropped the heavy metal base to the between our legs (after which they just picked it up and continued to use it) and, also, the slicing was so careless what fat would drip and squirt and chunks of meat and fish missed our plates ending on the floor. To be fair, the tables were tiny and this makes the whole system too awkward.
Additionally, drink and dessert orders were not taken by these fellows, but by the one waitress in the place, who was in charge of the whole restaurant (inside and street). Consequence: we spent the majority of our meal thirsty and waited for AGES to get our check.
The red meats were alright in quality, not bad but nothing to be proud of. The shrimp, the chicken, the fish and even the pineapple just tasted like fat (blame the grill system) and were hard to digest.
More sanitary shortcomings:
The restaurant is new and the grill area is behind a glass wall. This allowed me to witness who seemed to be the owner or manager handling MONEY with the chef in charge of the grill, who not only didn't wash his hands but also kept touching the food with them. Many a time I saw the boys wipe their knives with a dirty rag that was used for everything. As I said, we sat by the kitchen, so we got quite a good look of what went on in there. Apparently, hairnets or chef hats are not mandatory in Belgium.
To sum up, never again! read more