TLDR: Horrible experience. Don’t visit.

Visited this brew house on our last night in Germany. After we sat down, before we received the menu, two glasses of Kolsch was placed on our table (for my wife and I) by a waiter and he walked off without saying anything.

I remember reading about how the “traditions” of brew houses in Cologne involved the servers replenishing your Kolsch non-stop until you put a coaster over your glass. So I thought the brew house was just practicing their customs (though the servers in other brew houses in cologne always asked me for my drinks order before serving the kolsch) and I kept mum about it. Anyway, I was going to order their Kolsch. And to be fair, their Kolsch is pretty good.

But it was rather… weird after I noticed that other tables’ guests had waiters attending to them and asking them for their orders before bringing them drinks.

We ordered

• Sauerbraten, a dish of marinated roast beef for myself
• Potato soup for my wife

The Sauerbraten was to come with pickled red cabbage and potato dumplings. But I realised I wasn’t into German potato dumplings from previous meals so I requested to change to fried potato. They were gracious enough to entertain my request.

However, the Sauerbraten was poorly done. It was tough and dry despite the presence of plenty of gravy. My wife and I took merely two mouthfuls of it and decided it was enough. The pickled red cabbage was overly sweet (but sure, maybe some people like it really really sweet). The fried potatoes were fried well, only that it was unevenly seasoned. A mouthful might taste decent with the next mouthful too salty and the following too bland (sure, we can go along with the law of average)

The potato soup was… simply bland. It was thick with cream/starch but there was hardly any flavours. Still, one can add enough salt and black pepper on the table. I wouldn’t give a 1 star review for that.

During the service, our servers were seemingly grumpy. When one of them was to place our plate of sauerbraten and soup on the table, he literally placed the plate onto my left hand on the table without warning and I had to quickly withdraw my hand from the table so that the plates can be let down.

After taking a few mouths of our food, we thought that’s enough for the night and we would rather pick up a sandwich on our way back to the hotel. So we asked for the bill.

When the server came and saw the food on the table, he didn’t raise a question about the food (which we didn’t expect him to honestly. But just highlighting this to let you guys know that he didn’t bother much about us and the importance of the next point). I asked for payment in cash (so as to spend my remaining cash Euros)

When the check was presented, I saw a bill of $31.80 (as seen in the receipt). I took out a $50 note and a $2 coin for the bill expecting $20 in change.

Now, I did understand that while tipping ain’t common in Germany, everyone welcomes more money. My experience in Germany so far:

• the waiter might ASK you if you like his service and hint for tips (no biggie. What’s there to lose by asking?)
• the waiter might round up the bill to the nearest dollar and keep the pocket change
• the waiter might simply return you the exact change and you can then decide if u want to tip or not

But for this case… after passing the waiter $52 for a bill of $31.80, he took out a $5 note then put on the table and asked “enough?”

$15 tip on a $31.80 bill? For the worst meal we had over 2 weeks in Germany?? For service that was non-existent? And for the way the tip was asked for???

I said “no”. The server took out another 2x $5 bill and asked me again if it was enough. When I said “no”, he asked how much did I want back then. I said “$20”. He then said he needed to go get change for it.

He did go and get the change and returned me a $20 note. After the exchange, I looked at the receipt again. There was a “tip” component that was at $3.10. Maybe they had “expectations”. But to ask for a $15 tip on a $32 bill this way? It was ugly. 0 star worthy.