Taverna Pupo — Restaurant in Dubrovnik

Fans of Fawlty Towers might enjoy for comedy value.

We went for breakfast, but after seeing the menu, we decided to hold out for a good lunch later and just have coffee, orange juice and toast.

I don't think they own a toaster, as the bread was just warm with some horizontal griddle lines in it. The butter was cold as ice and impossible to spread and the coffee was a bitter mess with a dollop of foam on top, although that's typical of Dalmatian coffee. On the plus side, the orange juice tasted freshly squeezed.

There were about 4 staff in there, to maybe 15 customers at most. They seemed to find it difficult to cope. Whilst we were in there, three different customers came in asking if they could order food. They were told to "wait for the waiter" a catch phrase which was used regularly by the staff behind the bar. The waitress seemed to be the only person in there doing anything, perhaps she was on a break or something.

Then a fella arrived who was a dead ringer for Basil Fawlty, I think he might have been the owner as he spent a lot of time pointing at things, including us. He proceeded to make things worse by arguing with the other staff and generally getting in the way.

I asked for the bill and was told, you guessed it, "wait for the waiter".

One to...

Mi auguro che i ristoranti a Dubrovnik imparino quanto prima l'ABC della ristorazione. È inaudito chiudere la cucina mentre i clienti sono seduti e sono arrivati da mezz'ora. È inaudito sottrarre pietanze e bevande mentre il cliente sta ancora mangiando o bevendo. Il conto finale, salatissimo e sproporzionato come in tutta Dubrovnik, però lo fanno pagare eccome! Sono tutti sgarbati, frettolosi e approssimativi. Cari croati, imparate a campare!

Risposta al commento del proprietario :

Unfortunately, this is not the case. If the kitchen closes at 11 p.m., you should not, peremptorily, accept customers after 9 p.m. You seat people until 10:30 p.m., from what we have seen, and then, after half an hour, you ask, without being asked, how they want to pay the bill. This is a common custom throughout Dubrovnik and parts of Croatia, but unfortunately it does not correspond to international restaurant ethics. You have to give up the place settings that would arrive after 9pm. Instead, you do not waive at all, you seat the customer and then kick him out. In our case, a waiter even took a full glass of wine from the hands of one of our diner, without even asking. Revise a little your standards, because it is the customers who...

After browsing a few menus we settled on this place for dinner. Not a great decision as it turned out.

We had the Dubrovnik Chicken, which comes with a mushroom sauce, vegetable spring rolls and a chicken caesar salad.

The Dubrovnik chicken was slightly overcooked and the mushroom sauce lacked any real mushroom flavour or depth, and was further ruined by drizzling a balsamic glaze over the dish.

The vegetable spring rolls (mini) are the cheap things you buy from the freezer section of a supermarket that are more pastry than filling. They were undercooked - crispy outside, soggy inside.

The caesar salad arrived without chicken. They corrected this without issue and returned after 5 minutes or so, which seemed to be a long time to correct a salad with no hot components. It was over dressed, the cooked chicken was over seasoned and the croutons were stale - obviously leftovers from a few days earlier.

Our waiter was fairly good, which was the only saving grace for this place. For what they are charging they need to sort their chefs out and raise the standard of their cooking and their presentation.

This was cafe food at best. We...