Umami — Restaurant in Berlin

Came here after being hyped up by the reviews. The service was really nice and quick and the atmosphere had a great vibe to it, as it was a bank holiday. People were really relaxed and Berlin was welcoming the summer with open arms.

We started with Spring in Rolls, which were good but average. And for mains, we went with Tongkin's Roastduck, Banh Bao Burger and 2x Fit for kids + 1 rice for our kids, a bottle of fizzy water, 2x mango lassies and a juice for 80,- €. Which is quite a lot. Too late I realized that the 2x Fit for kids were charged as Mains (6,90 € vs 12,90€) ?!?! Even though we were with 2x small children and this should have been taken into account, as the "upgrade" needs to be requested as well.

Now to the mains - Tongkin's Roastduck, maybe our experience eating duck in Soho, London are at fault here, but the duck was chewy and didn't taste as fresh, and while the veg was nice and crunchy, the sauce was overly sweet. Something that a lot of asian restaurants in Berlin are guilty of, understandably catering to the local crowd, but most of the time, it's simply overwhelming sweet and any finer nuances are lost. The Banh Bao Burger was nice experience, although, the meat patty tasted more like a regular Frikadelle / Boulette to me, which pulled me out of it. But I did like the crunchiness of the mango coleslaw and the fresh taste of coriander. Their Kimchi is also very tasty.

The kids meals Fit for kids were regular chicken, mixed veg and rice with a soy sauce, which again turned out to be overly sweet. Rice was nice, but it also very hard to mess that up anyway.

The mango lassies were good though, not too sweet. Last but not least, while we had 28° degrees and were sitting outside, waiting for a the refreshing fizzy water, the bottle that we got was room temperature and instead of feeling refreshed drinking it, we felt the opposite. I don't think we will be back here. The vibe was great and I'm sure that people like the food, but I felt for that price, the food should have blown us away. I can get more authentic and better asian cuisine for much less in other parts of Berlin but then again, that's Prenzlauer Berg for you :P.

Anyway, this restaurant is successful for reasons and I wish them nothing but the...

The food was delicious, but the waiters were very rude. I have worked in restaurants my whole life, so I know a thing or two about service, and I was very disappointed with the treatment we received. The waiter brought us the wrong appetizer and argued with us about what we ordered, and then again when we were unsure if they gave us the correct entree (they didn’t), they got angry and the language barrier did not help. My German isn’t very good, and our server’s English wasn’t either. When we asked for two bowls to share our entree, the server got angry again and gave us a lot of attitude, as if he had never seen people split a meal. There was no apology offered and we left feeling unhappy. Be prepared to deal with slow, unprofessional, & disinterested staff here.

EDIT: We ordered the “autumn” mango salad, which was good and accurate. We also ordered the “spring in roll” and the “purple bird” which was a weekly special item. They brought us the “summer in roll” which is not fried & contains salmon, very obviously different from the crispy golden fried beef rolls we expected. The “purple bird” was supposed to contain taro, beets, and pumpkin, but they brought us a dish that had no beets, no taro, potato instead of pumpkin, and it had bitter greens & bean sprouts, which were not listed on the menu. I have never posted a review about a restaurant, but the treatment I received genuinely ruined my day, and I was so looking forward to a warm bowl of beets and taro root with pumpkins on a chilly fall day. The host didn’t even say goodbye when we left the restaurant, and if I had been the server in this situation, I absolutely would have offered to take an item off the bill. Absolutely disgraceful service. If I could rate it -1...

My friends reserved a table on a weekday. Getting there and being seated was no problem at all and overall I had a good first impression.

BUT it went downhill afterwards. We were 5 people with only 3 menus and 4 sets of cutlery (why, can't you count?) although the restaurant was pretty empty when we got there, so no excuses of being busy and stuff missing which I'd have understood.

We also felt rather rushed to order as the staff asked us every passing minute if we were ready. I kindly asked if it were possible to leave out an ingredient in my drink and they only replied:"I don't know" and left. After receiving my drink, again, they just up and left without telling me if my wish was considered or not. A+ for communication skills.

When ordering food, we asked about some ingredients in their dishes so we could decide what to order (I know this can be annoying but it's part of the job and I can assure we were friendly and patient) but the staff acted so unmotivated. At one point, they even said: "It's not my fault that this dish is like this!" Again, they were quite unprofessional in my opinion and may need some proper schooling or just do another job if they don't like it...

The food was alright, it's not expensive and you get filled but also quite generic. Other similar restaurants may offer better alternatives and most importnatly -...