Alambique — Restaurant in Medellín

Started strong, ended badly.

We went to Alambique as first timers (tourists) based on the strong reviews and proximity to our hotel. The rooftop space and decor are great. They really nailed that.

Their menu is all Spanish, which I can mostly read, but we asked for help, and the staff was very accommodating with recommendations and descriptions. We ordered a type of shrimp cocktail with a large patacones chip, cheese stuffed pork & beef meatballs in pastry, and then we asked for a complimentary third dish that wasn't too big because there were only 2 of us. Our server suggested a mixed cuts of pork dish, which I would describe as a casserole with cheese and cornmeal as its base, but I didn't fully understand this due to language limitations. This is when things started to go wrong.

First came the casserole, which while tasty, was extremely heavy, and I wondered how it was complimentary to the cheese stuffed meatballs that came next. The casserole is a bit of mushy mess texture-wise, and I think the dish should be reworked. I admit personal taste could change your opinion on that, and perhaps it's a twist on a traditional dish I'm not familiar with. The meatball tasted good, but again it was very heavy and cheesy. The pesto style sauce with the meatballs is very tasty. Unfortunately, the meat around the cheesy centre was very pink. I understand it's tough to do a melted cheese stuffed meatball in pastry and get the baking right, but if you're going to put it on a menu with ground pork maybe you should figure out a way to nail it. I ate it anyway because I'm realistic about the risks, but many would not have been ok with it.

Around the time the meatballs arrived the evening dinner rush hit. This is a great place to people watch the "beautiful people" of Medellín. It's also a good place to notice how stratified Colombian society is by skin tone, i.e. most people looked like me, a Canadian right out of a long winter.

The front of house started seating people all over (many shared tables), and individual servers did not appear to be working specific areas. We ordered a water and limonada natural (limeade) to follow our beers, and the water came quickly, but the limonada never did. At this point the place was packed, and servers were running around without any clear system. We were forgotten. 45 minutes passed after our second dish, and the 3rd had not come. That was 25 minutes or so after the drink order that was only half completed.

At this point, I waved over the server who took our food order (he never came back to us, others delivered food and took the drink order) and told him that we were done and didn't need the 3rd dish. He was clearly disappointed and apologized. I appreciated that he had the good sense not to add the standard 10% tip that most restaurants add in Colombia.

This place looks cool and has potential, but I don't see how they have such a high rating when clearly the wheels come off the bus when they're busy. It's normal for restaurants to slow down, but it's not normal to undercook food, or for two different servers to forget a food order and drink order, respectively. The two dishes we did get should not have been recommended as complementary, as they were both mushy, heavy, cheesy plates. I personally think these could be worked on to refine textures and balance. Ultimately, I think this place is highly rated because it's "in". It's in Poblado, which is a cool neighbourhood. It looks cool. And cool, wealthy young Paisas come here. It's a place to see and be seen. I don't think it's a particularly serious restaurant or a...

Food: 5 stars Value: 5 stars Service: 2 stars Dealing with getting a table: 0 stars

I went to this restaurant at 6:40pm Sunday after seeing Google’s busy chart. Said no wait and not busy.

We were greeted by someone at the door saying they were too busy all day and had to make reservations. He then only allowed one person in my party to go upstairs to make a reservation on their book. While going upstairs, the place was completely empty. Maybe 2 tables had customers. He made it sound like he was doing us a favor by barely fitting us in the following day at 6:30 for dinner. In other words, the restaurant is trying to make an appeal of an exclusive dining experience.

Fast forward a day and I get a table with the reservations. My server never once came to check on the table. I ordered the mango, tangerine, banana fruit drink and asked for no banana. When the beverage arrived, I could taste the banana. When I told my server, she said that maybe the drink is pre made with all ingredients. For an exclusive top notch restaurant that they try to appear, I would expect the server to know more about their menu and inform me that I can’t exclude ingredients.

The portions are large. A brisket will serve at least 2 adults. The food was very tasty. It took about 30 minutes to arrive after ordering, which was faster than I was told.

Now as far as being so exclusive and busy, I took statistics of how busy this place really was:

6:30 8 of 12 tables occupied 2 of 5 bar seats occupied 1 of 4 side seats occupied ————————————————- 7:00 8 of 12 tables occupied 5 of 5 bar seats occupied 3 of 4 side seats occupied ——————————— 7:30 4 of 12 tables occupied 5 of 5 bar seats occupied 2 of 4 side seats occupied ——————————— 8:00 7 of 12 tables occupied 1 of 5 bar seats occupied 4 of 4 side seats occupied

Now granted, this was only the 2nd floor. There is a 3rd floor with more tables and I did see a few parties arrive and go upstairs.

On my floor, I did see 3 parties arrive with no reservations and get a table immediately.

So it’s completely up to you if you want to deal with the hassle and BS of going to get a table. Me personally, I’ll pick one of the hundred other restaurants within a mile before returning here.

Also, tip will be included in your check. Pretty standard here, but my server didn’t not deserve 10%, and I would...

Some background about myself - I'm 50, lived in nyc for many years, and am based in Shanghai now. I've traveled to MANY different countries (including many tripes to Medellin), and have dined at establishments across the spectrum: Michelin to street. After reading multiple travel blogs raving about Alambique, I was very excited to partake. Sadly, it was the worst food I've ever had in Medellin.

The good: excellent, lively, tasteful decor. The words homey and slightly whimsical comes to mind. Excellent, polite severs, but as par for the course in Colombia, almost everything else was slow. Not just the mains (which certainly didn't take 45 min), but the cocktails.

The bad: the salad and brisket.

We ordered:

1. Mexicorea 7/10
2. Alambique salad 4/10
3. Brisket 1/10

If you've read this far, I'll skip the Mexicorea. It was good, period.

The salad - many salads have a mix of various flavors and textures from a variety of ingredients. The good/great ones have complimentary flavors; the Alambique salad flavors did not work well together. This is subjective, but my friend and I both strongly felt this way. However, it wasn't horrible and we ate 80% of it.

The brisket - if it's really slow cooked for 10 hours like the menu says, it needs 20 hours or a chef. This dish had no redeeming qualities. First, it was lukewarm. Second, the dish was composed of a soup base, then cheese (cold, un-melted), then brisket (lukewarm), and finally raw, unflavored spinach thrown on top. It's not very difficult to make brisket that's reasonably tasty, even at home. This did not pass that threshold. In fact, if I went to my friend's place for dinner and they served me this, I wouldn't hold my tongue; "thanks for the effort but this needs improvement." In short, it didn't even meet the "amateur dinner party" threshold.

Epilogue - the server asked us if wanted the brisket to go, as it was 90% uneaten. We said no. It's a high standard, but a restaurant worth their salt would either take it off the bill, or comp a dessert/drink to show their...