Niko'las 0/360 — Restaurant in Sofia City

ATTENTION TOURISTS: BE CAREFUL

We sent an email on June 10th trying to book a table, but we didn't get any answer. On June 12th we sent a DM on Instagram but we just got an automatic reply. Since we were travelling from a different country we decided to go to the restaurant on our first day in Sofia to finally book a table for June 17th, for dinner. We were 2 people celebrating our birthdays. We absolutely regret the decision of booking our table here instead of other Sofia restaurants that we had considered. Apart from what I'll explain below, the service in general was quite poor. Definitely our worst service experience from all the restaurants we've visited in Bulgaria in 7 days. We sat at the terrace and we decided to have the 6-course menu (it includes 2 starters, 1 main course, 2 desserts and 1 cheese board at the end) + the wine pairing. If you're used to Mediterranean standards, you will for sure think that this menu is overpriced (about 70€/person, with elaborations that were not aligned with the price at all). But on top of it, the wine pairing is about 20€/person, for 4 glasses of wine. The pairing didn't make any sense (for example, red wine to be paired with shrimps or with sea bass). The order was: rosé wine, red wine, another red wine and Mavrud red wine. The 2 desserts are frozen and they brought the second one when we hadn't finished the first one. We were not very happy with the experience overall, but everything what happened around the bill was definitely the last straw. At 10:45 pm (not being the last table, since next to us there was a table with 4 people still eating) the waitress said that she would bring the bill. The brunette waitress with glasses brought us the bill (a total of 408 BGN). After we paid with card, she left the credit card ticket and took the bill. That felt weird since we always like to double check the bill just in case, and it felt like the total amount was higher than what we were expecting after seeing the prices in the menu. So I asked them to bring the bill again, and it took them some minutes to do so (it looked like they were chattering in a strange way). When the other waitress brought the bill, she said that the actual price was 371 BGN, and when I asked about the (approximately) 40 BGN difference, she got nervous and said "maybe my colleague made a mistake". She asked if it was okay to give us the difference in cash despite having paid with card, and we said that it was fine. They brought us the 40 BGN to our table. And again, I had to ask them to bring me the bill (again, they had taken it away). While we understand that making mistakes is human and it could happen to anyone, the way they managed the whole situation made everything even worse. The brunette waitress with glasses, who supposedly "made the mistake" never came to our table to apologize or give us an explanation. Her colleague was really nervous when trying to deal with us after what happened, and when we asked for an explanation all she said was "maybe my colleague made a mistake" all over again. When we were leaving, after this whole bitter experience, the brunette waitress with glasses came to us and apologized. She offered us a bottle of wine to compensate us, but we didn't accept it and just left. The overall experience before paying the bill deserved 3/5 stars, but after what happened it just deserves 0 stars. Such a shame for a restaurant that looks quite good.

PS: after translating the bill, it looks like she manually entered 37 BGN as tips (which would be around 10% of the total), without even asking or letting us know. PS2: just to mention 2 good things - the violette dessert was really good. And they gave us some sweet red wine at the end of the menu as...

Firstly the food here is fusion so don’t expect typical Bulgarian Fayre.

Located on a square, first apperance it looks like a wine shop but closer , its Wine bottles at the front and then step down to the restaurant.

Beautiful modern interior with white table clothes. Open plan kitchen so views of the kitchen from two parts.Nice art on the walls.

Small cocktail menu with selection of champagne, reds and white and cocktails .

Menu was handed out in Bulgarian and took about 5minutes before I could get it swapped for an English menu.

Amouse bouche of a small egg shaped dish tasted reminiscent of taramasalate with crotons.

The donuts with shrimp was similar to a smooth Thai fish cake with an amazing sweet curry sauce ( white with green dots with some darker fluids over it) and mango strands. Great dish just the Sauce ran out whilst eating the 2nd donut so could do with more sauce.

Mains of fish was somewhat disappointing- it was Red Porgy with nori. I don’t think the fish and the nori matched well. The spinach asparagus was blend and the asparagus average.

The yuzu negroni was sweet, off balance Something sweet due to some syrup in the negroni.

Desert was excellent: Bulgarian 2.0. Yogurt done violet was broken to revealed cream of violet with jelly and honey comb cracker and frozen yogurt dome.

Service was on the slow side and was not proactive in terms of making sure the correct language menus was handed out at the start.

The fish mains for the most disappointing bit...

Before anything else, keep in mind that this restaurant is located in Bulgaria, so don't expect the fine dining experience typically found in the more upscale spots across Europe.

We arrived at 8:00 PM on a Saturday night for dinner. I ordered a pork steak, only for the server to inform me after few minutes that they had already run out, which struck me as odd. It's still early in the evening, and they’re already out of one of their five main dishes? I ended up ordering beef, which was fine, and we also tried the Wagyu gyoza which was a regular gyoza to me.

The restaurant itself was quite cold. We were seated near the garden entrance, and people were constantly going in and out to smoke, which was frustrating. On top of that, the door wasn’t properly closed, making the space even chillier. Some guests even asked for blankets, while we were seated inside.

There was also noticeable dust on the shelves, which was surprising.

Additionally, I had to track down the server because the dessert menu I had requested never arrived. It seemed like the server had more important tasks, like cleaning dishes, to attend to. I also can’t help but feel that the person who hired her missed the mark—she was quite young and seemed better suited for a casual spot like “Raffy,” rather than a fine-dining venue.

All in all, the food was decent, but the overall experience and price didn’t quite live up to...