This is a hard review to put in words. When my wife and I arrived at 20hr we were seated in an empty dining room decorated in a style that reminded me of a clash between the late 1980 TV show Miami Vice with Eastern...European tastes. The walls were papered with gold foil geometric patterned wallpaper and large format gold framed art and mirrors. The two wall tables were strangely elevated as they floated against the walls holding pottery and vases. On the table, standard leather or vinyl placemats were replaced with painted glass, which simply defeats its purpose. The music included odd jazzy cover songs of top 40 hits from the past decades.
The staff included two young men in three piece suits and and older gentleman in jeans and a polo shirt, who we only learned later was the chef and owner. We learned this because the suited team referee to him as „chef“ a few times in the dining area as if this was some reality TV show. A young woman also came from the kitchen a few times to explain our meals. Then others did this as well and annoyingly for my wife, one would use his pinky finger to point to eat vegetable which got too close for comfort to the food in her opinion.
Strangely the chef didn’t seam to be cooking. We chose the mystery 6 course menu which started out excellent. My menu was focused on fish and the smoked trout with whipped cream was excellent. I could have eaten a larger portion. The gazpacho soup, also extremely good, but then things went a bit sideways. The courses seemed to get more complex and artistic as if the kitchen was trying too hard to combine the latest cooking gimmicks together. There was frothy touches, unusual ice cream flavors, something which looked like moss and the French copper pot made an appearance from the kitchen to spoon us a broth.
The wine list is extensive and when we gave a €60 budget of something local the chef recommended a tasty Chenin Blanc from his friend which was only €30, which scored him some points in my book.
Sadly those points were lost as we waited 24 minutes for the bill after asking for it three times. Normally I don’t mind but we were seated at 20hr and it was now 22:30.
My advice to the chef, drop the jeans and polo and replace it with a formal chefs attire if you are going to be called chef. Humbly introduce yourself and focus on a less artistic and simple menu. The monk fish and tuna was excellent, but instead of accompanying it with Picasso give me potatoes.More
