Foodvibes — Restaurant in Antwerp

[Update 23 Feb. 2021]

After almost a year, I got a message from the owner, asking me to “review my review,” in an email that is verbose but evasive. Essentially the owner just keeps calling the incident the result of some miscommunication, without explaining what was miscommunicated, and without actually addressing the issues singled out in the original review. I noticed he’d also removed his initial response to the original review, which was basically a more defensive, but equally evasive, version of today’s email.

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[Original review, 27 Feb. 2020]

Very dishonest establishment. Never had I encountered such tactless scamming in Belgium.

My colleague and I went there for lunch, during lunchtime, in view of the superlative reviews. We were seated and given a food menu (with no drinks listed), which indicated a "lunch" price as well as a "diner/groot" price for the pasta dishes. The waiter approached us asking what we'd like to drink, reciting items such as tonic water, whilst looking over at the fridge in the corner, where Schweppes tonic water, among other things, was on display. We then each ordered a carbonara, without specifying, or being asked to specify, the size. I also ordered a tonic water.

I then received what was essentially a mocktail, consisting of not just regular tonic water, but also cranberries, mint leaves, etc. At that point I was already thinking, wow that's low. And indeed, in the end I was charged somewhere around 4 euros for it. The carbonara that followed after a long wait was "student-nice" at best, but that wasn't so surprising, nor relevant to this review.

Before leaving, I paid for myself, and then paid for my colleague, in a separate transaction, because she didn't have her bank card with her. After paying, I did not receive the customary question whether I wanted my receipt, and when I actively asked for it, I was only given my colleague's. It was a bit unusual, but I thought I only really needed that one anyway. When looking at the receipt (according to which the waiter was the owner, Gillian) much later, however, we noticed that she was charged the "diner/groot" price for the pasta. Judging from my bank card entry, I have good reason to believe that that was the case for my dish as well.

You can serve bad pasta. You can ask for whatever price you see fit. But you don't scam your...

I think this "restaurant" is an example in managing expectations - it was OK, but given all the photos, reviews, Instagram etc. I was expecting a lot more.

To start with, me and my wife walked past the "restaurant" twice without noticing - it turns out the front is a small door, through which you go through to the dining area, which is the lounge of a residential property. Very easy to miss.

Initially I was slightly confused to be told there was no beer available,given this is in Antwerp and there is more than one shop within 100m with beer for purchase - there certainly hadn't been a beer rush that evening before we arrived. I could have gone and purchased a stock for the bar with relative ease.

We ordered the green pesto and the bolognese, whilst working through the bread and cream cheese (apparently the bread sticks were out of stock)

The food was decent enough and of a good portion size when it arrived, but did take over an hour and was "warm" rather than hot. The reason became clear when paying, as everything is cooked on a couple of hot plates inside the front building (not sure whether that's complimentary on the ability of a hot plate or negative that it is considered a "restaurant"). On its own that's fine, but when there is one person trying to do it all, it makes it tough to manage everything, and whilst the reviews give the impression it's a small and intimate "restaurant", it really is one person doing their best.

If you are looking for a decent meal at an average price then this will work, but don't expect a full...

2 stars for cosy outside sitting & relative friendliness of the staff.

The choice on the menu was limited & simple, which I personally find nice. However, the quality of the dishes (mostly everything is pasta on the menu) is questionable and rather amateur for the price that you pay. By ordering pasta green pesto we expected to have a warm dinner, instead of it we had a semi warm one. The green pesto (which was claimed to be fresh) tasted a bit better than supermarket pesto in glass jar, it tasted like it was made a while ago. The whole dish was sprinkled with a few sun dried tomatoes, 2 cherry tomatoes, Parmesan and no promised rucola at all. In addition to that, despite ordering 2 exactly the same medium portions (they have also big ones), we received 1 medium and the other one was 2/3 sized of the medium. Coming back to dry pesto: we asked for a bit of olive oil to smoothen the pasta & received a small pot of vegetable cooking oil… :/ At this point we completely gave up on the food and just enjoyed the nice outside sitting around beautiful old buildings.

Cherry on the top: the staff primarily charged us for 2 large portions, not even looking into the order notes until we corrected them.

30€ for 2 glasses of sparkling water + dry semi-warm green pesto pasta. Very disappointed.

The place has a potential though. It could have been a cool authentic home food spot at a great location, which seemed to be so from the reviews until we had...