Ristorante Ciro — Restaurant in Kaiserslautern

I wish I could comment on the food as Ciro was recommended by a friend, but my husband and I just had the oddest experience with the server upon entry, so we left. We speak English, the server did not - no big deal, we have lived in Europe for years and always manage to communicate in restaurants where English is not spoken. When greeted by the server, I said “two people” in England and in German. The woman said “yes, no English.” She repeated herself several times. It’s not necessarily what she said, it’s how she said it. The sever seemed annoyed with us, did not get menus, or make any attempt to seat us. We were both dressed nicely - not sure why we encountered her blockade at the door. We stood there waiting awkwardly as she looked at us, until we turned around and walked out. I am not sure if this woman was confused, assumed we were not intelligent enough to translate a menu on our own, or just tired of customers for the day, but she misjudged us. Ciro is located on the doorstep of several American military bases which support her local economy. I do NOT feel Ciro staff needs to speak/understand English (albeit advantageous to business owners in this area), but I do feel greeting customers with several “no English” statements is inappropriate and off-putting. The awkward blockade at the door was inappropriate too. Your guests all have Google translate and we can certainly order from a menu and pay a bill if English is not spoken in the restaurant - no big deal. If we all try to understand each other, the customer gets food, and the business makes money. Again, I don’t want to over-assume, but this interaction seemed a little more deep-seeded than a misunderstanding. I certainly hope the owner finds someone to translate this review to this person so other guests do not encounter this odd behavior again. So instead, we ate at the Royal Aroma Indian restaurant nearby. We ate exceptional Indian food while we lived in the UK for 5 years —Royal Aroma is a 10/10 and very clean! I highly recommend Chicken Korma...

We had dinner there with some friends. The place had been recommended by the maitre at Oskar in K-Town. Seats on the terrace are nice if its mild but the nearby road tends to be quite noisy. So some glas partition would come in handy to facilitae conversation and block dust and fumes. We had ordered fish, steak and pizza, some prosecco (no champaign or sparkling wine on the menue !) and pinot grigio. The nameless prosecco came cool, sufficiently sparkling and had a good taste. Not so much the pinot grigio which left a soapy aftertaste. Lots of an undefinable ubiquitious sauce made it hard to taste either the starters and the almost cold fish when the plates arrived. The steak though ordered medium-rare came in well done. The pizza had almost cooled down to ambient temperature and was - no joke- "pre-cut". Tasted OK. Espresso came with no crema and the Ramazotti came diluted with lots of ice. Not sure what exactly caused our collective...

Just to put the service review to rest, I found it Fair. I walked in and put in a to go order. I had no idea what to expect so I ordered basic food just to start my reviews. Maybe it is because I am a foreigner or because of how I was dressed but they did not look to happy for me to be there. I did have on regular clothes, but their establishment looked a little more classy than what I was wearing. I do this on purpose since I write (real) articles for other restaurants. The food was exemplary as well as the preparation time. Highly...