Vapiano — Restaurant in Prague

I have heard the food is good here, but I'm sorry....this place is ridiculous. Its a case study in how to overthink your restaurant to the complete inconvenience of your customers.

It claims to be a buffet style restaurant, buts its not that, since all the food is made to order. That's better right? Nope. This means when you arrive, you decide what you want, and then you have to queue up at the right station (of which there are several) to place your order. Since there is not table service though, this means you have to stand there and wait for everyone in front of you to order, AND have their food cooked before its your turn. All for the sake of what, being more interesting? You're not interesting. You're just wasting time and resources trying to reinvent something that didn't need reinventing. But, it gets worse...here was our experience:

We stand around awkwardly in the middle of the restaurant looking through the menu trying to decide what to order. We decide on pizza and pasta. But, these are served form different stations, so we have to split up (made more difficult with a toddler in tow). I take the little one and head over to the pasta station. A few minutes later, my wife joins me because apparently the pizza station has a 30 minute backlog of orders. Strike one.

So, we wait 10-15 minutes for the customers in front of us in line to place their orders and have them fully cooked (all while the shmarmy "chef" is trying his best to impress/seduce the university aged girls in line in front of us with his 'oh-so-cool' cooking skills and creepy looks). Once we finally get to order, we ask for an order of risotto and ravioli. Oh, whats that? You are OUT OF ravioli? You have got to be kidding me. If you are out of ravioli, then go make some more! You literally have 30 people standing around this restaurant, none of which are waiting tables. And its an ITALIAN restaurant. Nobody here knows how to make some flipping pasta!? Strike 2.

Fine, I will go order some lasagna then. Which of course, is at a different station. I head over there, wait in line (AGAIN!) and place my order..."we're out of lasagna". Give me a break.

We were done at that point. Cancelled our risotto order and left. Be a buffet or be a made to order restaurant. Stop trying to be both. Its...

My visit was good overall but some parts were disappointing. I’ve been coming to vapiano for some time and even worked there for a year and a half 2.5 years ago (but in a different branch). I ordered Margherita, the cooks were nice and even asked me whether I have an ISIC card. I got a coke at the bar and was surprised that the lady just put the cup on top of the bottle and gave it to me without putting it on tray or anything. Also, there was no communication really, such as “put your card, it’s done, enjoy”. The tables where I sat were not too dirty, but not very clean either, you could see some stains after drinks left on the other table, pillows were set rather chaotically and messy. The music was very loud, since the ceilings are not that high compared to Quadrio branch, you hear it much louder. The pizza itself was okay, although the cheese was very chewy, even rubbery. The tomato base was good. The size of pizza got surprisingly and significantly smaller compared to how it was before. I checked promo pictures that vapiano posts on their socials, and the pizza seems to be covering almost the whole plate, not how it is on my picture. Toilets were clean, soap dispenser, towels - all in place. Big red flag for me is the red carpet that you see when you come in - it’s dirty and got dark. I understand that you can’t keep it perfect since people come in from the street, then maybe have a black one there? It just doesn’t look good. In general, employees were nice and looked nice but not as tidy and put together as it seemed to be before, maybe I just came in a wrong time. I’ll come again to try pasta just to understand if quality did actually change or it we just a coincidence. I’ll put 4/5 since I did finish my food and there was no...

This was absolutely horrible. I've been to vapiano a few times in the UK, however this time was definitely not up to my standards.

We got a creamy chicken pasta, 2 Margarita pizzas, one with added onions and mushrooms, 2 lemon lemonades and a beer for Kč 1120 or £40. This is slightly expensive in my opinion.

But it seemed very expensive once we tasted it. The lemonade - tasted like HEAVEN IN A CUP. The pizza - a complete contrast to that. It was slimy, runny, cheesy. It was clear the chefs added way too many things on it. The pasta wasn't mine, but the person who it was for on our table said it was, "bland and tasteless."

As for the atmosphere, the chefs kept dropping stuff, it was dirty, and one of the lamps weren't working - it reminded me of some pizza shop you'd find in the corner of your neighbourhood. The marble didn't change my opinion of this.

The staff were nice, though. They said, "enjoy", but when we told the waiter that there was too much cheese and sauce, he just laughed it off and didn't care.

I do not understand how you can mess up 2 Margarita pizzas, one with mushroom and onion, and a creamy chicken pasta. Will absolutely not come again, even if i'm back in Prague, especially when there are 3 decent pizza shops within a mile of each other.

I would have posted photos, but I thought I didn't need to because this...