BORDERING ON CRIMINAL. CASI CRIMINAL .
We were looking for a Japanese restaurant and Zen Market popped up in The Fork.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Zen is actually located within the Bernabéu Stadium. Located on the third floor, the elevators open onto a stylish reception replete with jellyfish swimming serenely in their soothing LED-lit tanks.
The restaurant is large and well decorated - mainly in a Chinese style. I immediately started to feel slightly nervous because neither the staff, nor the decor looked remotely Japanese, more Chinese and I started to suspect we were once again to be eating in one of these generic "Asian" restaurants that are a Jack of all trades but master of none. I am sure you have encountered many restaurants where vast sums have been sent on fabulous decor but the food is nowhere near the mark. You end up paying for the "ambience".
Greeted warmly by various members of the waiting staff, we were shown to a table on a raised level with partial views onto the pitch. All very exciting for my 13 year old.
And then it all went downhill at an alarming rate.
The menus arrived - a plastic laminate with silly font - something you would expect to be handed in a cheap Chinese takeaway somewhere in the suburbs of Birmingham.
I've got nothing against cheap restaurants or plastic menus, but you know you're in trouble when you then see that the prices are at least double those for the classiest, best and most authentic Chinese restaurants in London e.g. Royal China on Baker Street.
THE DINING EXPERIENCE
Because the Japanese food was so expensive, the menu so frankly unconvincing and the two sushi chefs looked so groggy when I went to the washroom, we opted for hot for instead. We ordered two hot and sour soups, a Pad Thai, a green chicken curry, a Szechuan chicken and crispy beef with some plain rice.
Only one soup arrived - it was fairly bland and I doubt it was cooked on the premises. The Pad Thai tasted nothing like Pad Thai - no Thai flavours, no texture, very little flavour, no peanut. After 10 minutes waiting and having already finished our dishes, we cancelled the other soup.
After 20 minutes waiting for the remaining dishes, we again complained and they promptly arrived.
The crispy beef was cold (so hadn't been picked up by the waiting staff). We sent it back. The green curry had a piece of chicken in that was roughly the size of a bottle of Tabasco. The curry was brown, not green and tasted nothing like a Thai green curry. It had no coconut milk, no lemongrass, nothing you would put in a Thai green curry. The restaurant and the chef were literally taking us for idiots.
Then my Szechuan chicken arrived. Deep-fried chicken lumps very similar to mini KFC nuggets with some Szechuan peppers and adornments scattered on the plate to try and pass it off as they real thing. The chicken was old, hard and dry, fatty and flavourless. Not spicy in the slightest.
In absolute shock I went to find the manager and complained. She was extremely polite and agreeable and thankfully agreed with all of my observations.
To clarify (in case you haven't read my other reviews), I have been eating Chinese food since I was a little child in London's Soho and my wife and I have lived and worked in Hong Kong for 4 years and The Philippines for two years and have visited Thailand on several occasions.
This restaurant is quite literally cheating and mocking it's clientele who are in the main ignorant (in the nicest possibly sense) of what authentic Chinese and Asian food tastes like. I wouldn't be so outraged if the prices weren't so sky-high and the food remotely flavoursome.
I cannot comprehend how the illustrious and respected Roger Chen would allow food of such appalling quality to be served up in one of his restaurants. Absolutely obscene and quite frankly, insulting.
Mr. Chen, I am an average but passionate home cook and cook Chinese food from time to time. I know that I could cook almost any dish in your restaurant (bar the crispy aromatic duck) better than the chef(s) who cooked my meal today - even if I was cooking the dish for the very first time. I have been eating Chinese food in London"s Soho since I was a child and have lived in Hong Kong and the Philippines for over 6 years.
There is no other conclusion to draw other than that you are knowingly serving completely unauthentic and sub-standard food at incredibly inflated prices to a mostly unwitting and docile clientele. You are killing your reputation.
Readers: you have been warned. read more
