I am super confused by the high reviews for this restaurant.

+1 star for a good location +1 star for the food coming out in a timely fashion (yes, I'm trying to be positive; and I only got starters, so I think this is generous)

-1 star for just weird vibes overall. When I approached the restaurant, they had a server poised in the door to block entry. He looked quizzical. When I asked him if I could have a table for one. He said yes, but that the only table that'd be available would be the one near the front door. No problem, in my opinion. He then showed me a printout indicating how many parties were reserved, and said they'd be filling in soon. Um, okay, whatever.

-1 for prices Okay, so European cities are expensive, and seafood is also expensive. That's expected. However, compare this to the food quality below.

-1 for food quality The first red flag was a tiny bread roll with margarine in a foil-sealed plastic cup. Uh oh. When you're paying 40-50 euro per person on a meal, why not go a step further and offer real butter with some sea salt? Maybe fresh, sliced bread? No--the roll was not fresh, and the margarine evoked airplane meals.

Next, the soup. Oh dear. For a restaurant entitled The Lobster House, this lobster soup had all trappings of being made in a hospital cafeteria. It was a curious dark orange color--not what one would expect from cream and lobster broth. It was completely devoid of any ornamentation; no chiffonade of chives, no dollop of sour cream, no drizzle of olive oil, nary a crouton in sight. No succulent chunks of lobster on top. Just a flat, burnt orange pond of foreboding. It had the consistency of microwaved Campbell's soup, and the flavor of a tea bag of lobster used thrice over. It was a dim memory of lobster flavor, if it had any flavor at all. Occasionally, I'd encounter a sad spheroid of roux dissolving in the dark orange. Worse, the bowl was too capacious, so I had to dig to verify that there was indeed no lobster in the lobster soup.

I politely pushed it as far away from me as I could to hopefully expedite the croquettes.

This was yet another mistake. The croquettes were equally bad. They had even less seafood flavor, let alone that of shrimp. They had the consistency of Elmer's glue thickened with tapioca on the inside. The salad was a flavorless mayonnaise monstrosity with a hard, grey-pink potato with enough white pith in the center to enrobe a tangerine.

Weirdly, the restaurant never filled with the tables the waiter mentioned. I also saw three more waiters, and only one of the four offered a smile.

The bathroom was medium-gross, and the urinal oddly had SIX green urinal cakes in it.

There were zero locals eating there, and it's small wonder why.

My mistake! Hopefully, not yours. Please avoid!