Let's start at the beginning: having to sign in to the website with my Facebook account in order to see your menu? Sincerely from all of us who aren't 19 year old marketing interns - f*ck you. But the reviews were so good, it must be worth it right?
Now we arrived on time for our 8pm reservation, and were told the table would be two minutes. Ten minutes later we were told that it would be another five minutes, which would normally immediately piss me off, but hey this place has so many good reviews, it had to be just a one-off mistake right?
Then we were led to a table next to the door and across from the bar. The table was too big for the seating, and because the legs were on the sides and not in the center it was nearly impossible to get into the bench seating, even for the younger people in our party, and there wasn't a lot of room for the legs of those sitting on the sides. But hey, small price for such a highly rated place, I was sure the food and service would more than make up for it.
Then the waiter forgot one of our drinks, and we waited ten minutes for her glass of wine... but the food! The food should make it all better right!? I mean the reviews gushed about the food, so that'll make it all better.
Finally the food came, I had the lamb, my girlfriend had the sea bass, and we were genuinely excited by the descriptions in the menu and the creativity that it promised. But, like everything else before it, we could not have been more dissapointed.
The menu promised me a lamb haxe with fresh baby spinach, baked sesame noodles, and root vegetables. The lamb was dry, some parts of it near shoe-leather in texture. The root vegetables couldn't be identified as they had been cooked to mush in the same over-seasoned greasy sauce that had covered the lamb. The baby spinach may have been fresh at one time, but as it had been cooked down to a watery mush with far too little seasoning it was nearly impossible to distinguish from frozen spinach. The "noodles" simply didn't make sense, as little oblong dumplings that were baked too hard on top to get a fork through, and were just mush on the bottom as though that had been sitting in the sauce for an hour. The whole dish was a mess.
My girlfriend was similarly abused. Her menu promised her an herb crusted sea bass on top of a caper risotto. Sounds good right? We thought so too... The risotto was over-seasoned and undercooked. The "herb crust" on the fish filet was three round pre-portioned green things haphazardly laid on top of the fish before it was stuck beneath a salamander or into a steam table or something, but that could have been forgiven if it had not been the BONES AND SCALES in the fish filet! These were brought to the attention of our waiter, who with all the same passion and professionalism that had gone into preparing our meal simply replied "yes, it's a fish." As if a professional kitchen is not expected to clean and scale fish filets before cooking them.
All of this would have been understandable if they weren't charging 20+ euro per dish, or if this were some tourist trap town of shitty restaurants. But there is much better and cheaper food out there. Go find one of those places.
(PS: to be fair, the other people at our table had steaks and enjoyed them, so if you must go there order one of those and apparently don't worry about being on time to your reservation.) read more
