The food here served was average Indonesian cuisine and tasted more like Thai cuisine. More restaurants serving authentic South East Asian food need to be set up in Köln so that discerning restaurant-goers are aware that they can get a better deal elsewhere. Customer service severely fell short of basic standards - what could have been an hour long meal turned out to be a 1.5 hour long affair, with many desperate attempts to catch the attention of the few roving waiters. What was intended to be a romantic date with my partner, turned out to be an infuriating experience with this restaurants. I would not recommend couples here on a date.
We made a reservation for 730pm on a Monday and arrived punctually to see a restaurant that's already busy. We were told to wait for 5 minutes to be seated, but the wait was about 10 minutes before they showed us to a poorly heated table in the corner of their Wintergarten. We did not protest of the poor location assigned as we thought the food might be the saving grace of this restaurant.
The waiter then took another 10 minutes before he noticed that our orders were not taken. Firstly, our drinks took 15 minutes to be served (even though it was just served from the draft). The starters took over 15 minutes to arrive. That said, the starters (sate ayam) was probably the best dish we tried that night. The main course took another 15 minutes before they arrived. The last straw was when we tried to foot the bill. We called for the waiter's attention and politely asked for the bill. More than 10 minutes had passed and there was still no sign of the bill, so I politely raised my hand to what appeared to be the manager of the restaurant. He came over and with a very curt tone, told us that our bill was coming, and then proceeded to serve other customers on other tables, even though he was fully aware that we had already been waiting for 10 minutes. The manager finally gave us the bill and rushed off before we could pay up. After yet another 10 minutes of waiting for our payment to be collected, we left in a fury with minimal tip left behind.
The disappointing customer service let down any good experience that could possible come from this restaurant. What was more infuriating was that the manager did not offer any apology throughout this ordeal. Granted, they may have been swamped by the post-Christmas crowd, or perhaps it may have been due to the poor seat location that it was so hard to grab the waiters' attention. In terms of value for money (or there lackof), we ordered only 1 starter, 2 main dishes and 2 beer which added up to €45. read more