After having good experiences at other Price brothers establishments a dining buddy and I decided to try out their diner. We arrived to find a short queue outside, but luckily we didn't have to wait long and once inside the place turned out to be only one third full - the line is there because, unlike most diners, a waiter will guide you to a table. Incidentally, at the first table we were seated at there was quite a draft from a nearby open door so we asked to be relocated.
Anyway, on a slow night in a diner with plenty of staff on the floor you'd expect to be served quickly, and sure enough a waiter was there to take our orders before we were done reading through the menu. We ordered our drinks and some hush puppies with barbecue sauce for a starter, and proceeded to read through the menu. Around 20 minutes later, after several attempts to get the attention of other waiters, the one who apparently had our table returned to take our orders. We ordered our food - two cheeseburgers, one of them with added bacon, both as rare as possible, and as sides we ordered fries, onion rings and cornbread and a selection of three different dips. We also had to remind the waiter that we'd already ordered drinks and hush puppies but hadn't seen them yet. A few minutes later our drinks arrived and when we were halfway through our drinks the hush puppies arrived - sans the barbecue sauce which took another few minutes to arrive, and only after we pointed out that it was missing.
Another long while later our mains arrived, everything but the dips served in various designs of metal baskets. Now, burgers, like sandwiches, were originally designed to be held onto and eaten with one hand. Some burgers (and some sandwiches) still are - they're the ones that are fairly small, with ingredients besides bun and patty used sparingly and as a consequence they easily stay in one piece when you bite into them. These burgers were of the more modern and larger design with several ingredients in a bun that comes apart more easily not least because of the amount of ingredients. As such, they were unfit for consumption without knife and fork, which in turn makes a basket a rather impractical vessel for serving them. But the choice of vessel strongly signals that they expect you to eat your burger in a way they didn't design it to be eaten so that is how we ate them, and luckily there were plenty of napkins on the table.
Now that I've spent an entire paragraph rambling about the (im)practicality of eating large burgers without utensils I should probably write a bit about the food. I liked the hush puppies but have no prior experience so nothing to compare them to. The burgers were of a fairly traditional design - lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, mayo, ketchup and all that jazz. Overall, they were well made and tasty; one of the best sesame buns I've had, good balance between the ingredients, not dry, not soaked in too much dressing, good quality meat. My only gripe is that the patties were fried a perfect medium which was not what we had ordered, but at this point it was more than an hour since we walked in the door and we didn't want to wait even longer so we ate our burgers as they were. The fries were slightly above average except for the one black-throughout specimen my partner bit into, the onion rings were good overall but a bit inconsistent, and my dining partner (either she's good at this or just unlucky) found one which was mostly from the dry, outer layer of an onion. The corn bread was a bit on the dry side for my taste, but again I haven't had cornbread more than once or twice before so I'm definitely not an expert. The dips were okay, although we were in doubt about whether or not the garlic mayo had garlic in it.
After finishing the mains we asked to see the menu again as we wanted to try their sundaes. My partner ordered Black Forrest and I Salted Caramel, and somewhat to our surprise our desserts didn't take eternities to arrive, although saying they arrived quickly would be a bit of an exaggeration. The ice cream used in both were of average quality. It worked well with my Salted Caramel while my partners Black Forrest lacked presence or punch, making it a bit boring.
Overall, the food was tasty but there were a few too many things to put a finger on. The waiters just didn't seem to be on top of things - there were plenty of them given the number of guests and yet drinks were forgotten and things moved way too slowly.
The whole thing took a bit less than two hours and the bill worked out to just shy of 850 kroner. This is too expensive for the experience we had, which is a pity because I like the idea of a Price diner in Tivoli, and I sincerely hope the situation will improve. read more