Timory — Restaurant in Leuven

I’m posting this review with a heavy heart… Today I was back in Leuven for the first time in 15 years and I was really excited to visit Timory, which was always my favourite restaurant when I lived here as a student. I was also excited to share this special place with my wife and child for the first time. Sadly those fond memories were tarnished by today’s experience.

The food was good, although considering how judgmental the waiter was about us ordering our fillet steaks rare (the waiter thinks it should be blue apparently), the steak was over-cooked. However, the service was off-puttingly awful. I’ve had indifferent service before in Belgium but this was on another level. The guy who served us was patronising and judgmental, commenting on what food we’d left on our plates and correcting every tiny mispronunciation of any Flemish words (it’s not our first language). I also had to remind him to bring drinks he’d forgotten multiple times. What was ultimately a €120 bill, would’ve been €160+ if he’d only checked on us once in a while. Instead we were roundly ignored in favour of locals. The cherry on top was when my 4 year old had to watch the waiter offer some Belgian children on a nearby table sweets as they paid their bill, only to discover the same courtesy wasn’t extended to him when we paid. Of course, after we left he asked me why as he couldn’t understand what he’d done wrong. My response, “You didn’t do anything wrong. Unfortunately son, he just wasn’t a very nice man”. And that’s what it boils down to… The way you treat people really makes a difference - today you upset a young boy for no reason at all and probably lost a customer who used to love your restaurant and has recommended it to countless people...

Extremely slow service ( restaurant was only at 25% capacity), tasteless food (worst grilled tuna I ever had in my life, far worst than canned tuna; vegetables had no taste as if made from plastic) and horrible tasting smoothies (frozen, made from concetrated juice) - the daily soup which was microwaved from frozen was the only thing we could eat. If this is rated 4 stars on average, I'd really recommend people travelling outside Belgium and experimenting what actual food...

I asked if they could make child pizza and they served what was obviously Dr.Oetker's minus two slices. They had literally taken away two slices from a pizza that they obviously didn't make from scratch. A new low even by Belgian standards where, let's be honest, the service is always subpar. P.s. happened few years back, I don't know if anything has changed ever since, I obviously won't be going back...