Restaurant Sankt Annae, Copenhagen.
"Expensive restaurant with huge bad service!"
One of the bad restaurants in Denmark.
Avoid this restaurant.
We are two professional people who write on an article about "Danish open sandwich restaurants", to be published in various flight journals (the ones you read when you're on a plane), and in food magazines.
We already have 20 good restaurants as experience and no bad, from service to food and the food presentation.
The tour had come to "Restaurant Sankt Annae" and there a table was reserved in advance, but it turned out to be a disastrous dining out!!
First we got a restaurant menu without prices. When I politely asked the foreign waiter to get a menu with prices printed on, he started a slightly unpleasant agumentation but finally gave me a menu card with prices printed on it.
CONCLUSION: There is a Danish law forbidding to give restaurant customers restaurant menus without prices on it. It was a bad start!
Next we ordered the Danish open sandwiches for each of us.
Normal restaurant service in Denmark is that when a guest is finished with the first piece of Danish open sandwich, then comes the next by a waiter. But with empty plates I waited for 10 minutes and got no attention. The waiters stood and chatted up at the bar, as if it was their day and purpose of work.
A female waiter passed our table. I kindly said (in Danish and with clear voice) "sorry, but we are missing our next pieces of food," but she just went on as if she had not heard me. 5 minutes later I managed to make contact to another female waiter. There was still only 3-4 guests at the restaurant at this time. I kindly said: "We are writing on an article about Copenhagen open sandwich restaurants, but the service is so far not the best here!" Then she said: "wait a moment".
A male waiter came to our table. He gathered our plates, knife and fork together and then droped the greasy knifes and forks from the plates down on my tailored trousers. Then he went away without saying sorry and offered no help to clean my trausers.
Then came the next two open sandwiches on the table. But suddenly the male waiter who was the owner of the business came back over to our table. He had a very unpleasant appearance and voice when he asked to see my name card. I gave it to him. He read it and said he wanted to take a photocopy of it, which I naturally informed him politely that he could not do because I had "a private phone number" and it was not for publication or for him. I politely asked for his name, but he refused! Then he question me, still in a very unpleasant way, on "whom we wrote the article for, and who we were and more unpleasant stuff a waiter or retsaurant owner never ask a customer. But I politely informed him. To his motion with his unpleasant questioning, I asked him (still in Danish) "if this conversation was an interrogation". Then I politely asked for his name, but he refused! End..., he walked away again.
5 minutes after he came suddenly over to our table again and now he said "that we had to leave the restaurant immediately and that no pay would be charged for the 4 pieces of food we had eaten. He final words was: "We have to use the table. Get out now!"
End, we left the restaurant astonished and offended. It was a very ucilivized behaviour. Obviously this restaurant lived by "occasional customers". A dull restaurant by a staff with most self-sufficient behavior as they were kings and queens who served here, only 10 minutes walk from the Royal Castle Amalienborg where people know how to behave with manners.
CONCLUSION: THERE ARE MANY GOOD LUNCH-RESTAURANTS IN THIS AREA. GO THERE IF YOU WILL HAVE A PROPER EXPERIENCE, AND DO NOT WANT YOUR CLOTHES SOILED BY SHODDY SERVANTS. THIS IS A BAD RESTAURANT WHICH IS NOT CARE FOR THEIR CUSTOMERS!
LOOKING AT THE PRICES ON "THE SECRET MENU CARD", IT IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE IN COPENHAGEN TOO!
NO MORE HERE!!!!
Per Gade
Professor
(wrote more than 80 books, including countless articles in international journals on food and restaurants).
PS: My colleague is a British retired director of a large British airline, who has lived in Denmark for 35 years. read more