UMO Restaurant — Restaurant in Budapest

My wife and I enjoy going out for dinner, and trying new things. For Valentine’s Day, we decided to try out this restaurant for the first time. They had a promotional Valentine’s Day menu. The menu was advertised as 22,900 ft per person per menu. The menu included a welcome drink, a welcome snack, a choice of appetizer, a choice of entrée, and a dessert. However, this was not true by the end of the dining experience, and it was revealed that every diner dining that evening would have a different experience. If dining alone, you received the menu in full. If two of you, you still paid the full price 22,900 per person, but only received one portion of the dessert and one portion of the welcome snack for the two of you. Roughly 1/3 less food for the full price and more valuable for you to dine independently vs as a pair. Thus making the dining experience a scam and false advertising. UMO is a part of the recommended section in the Michelin guide. When dining at a restaurant that is achieved, the status of Michelin recommended, you have a certain set of expectations for your dining experience. When things do not live up to those expectations, you categorize them from small, simple mistakes, to highly questionable errors that leave you wondering how this place could be recommend recommended in the Michelin guide with so many high standard restaurants in Budapest. Below are my qualms in order from least to greatest unfortunately:

When I show up for the Valentines promotional menu and the table is half wrapped in red gift wrapping paper, and taped down with scotch tape it’s not the most visually aesthetic. But that’s OK that’s something I can get over The waiter spills water over our table when pouring glasses. That’s a personal error, mistakes happen, but it starts to add up. Still okay though -We receive one portion of the menu advertised snack, even though we are paying for two full complete menus… this starts to become a bit concerning we are visited by four different waiters, who can’t remember if they’ve been to our table before. It starts to feel like we are not being thoughtfully waited on. -we receive a dish advertised as a fillet cut of fish, but not warned by the wait staff or the menu that there is bones in the cut. Only for the fish to be completely riddled with bones, and there be no way to thoughtfully dispense the bones so you pluck them from your mouth and set them on the edge of your plate. The experience is starting to become messy and impersonal and not thoughtful. The waiter brings two entrées to our table and openly admits “I honestly don’t even know what’s in here or what these are” and this starts to become a very concerning experience we bring the menu concerns to the manager, and she acknowledges the issue and says that the issue has been brought up by multiple people before. Why are we paying full price for two menus but not receiving the full course for two menus? If you have received complaints about this, why are you not doing anything about it? there is no offer of compensation or way to resolve the conflict. The manager agreed that it was an issue, we pointed out that it was essentially scamming customers with false advertising. And the manager agreed. But did not offer us compensation, other than saying “I can bring you another dessert if you’d like? last and most unfortunately the biggest error was the food. It was bland. When you go to a Latin restaurant, you expect exciting flavors but the side lime and the seasoning on the chip for the welcome snack was the most flavor we experienced. Everything else left us disappointed. If it was exceptional food, and mediocre service that would be fine. If it was exceptional service, and mediocre food, that would be understandable. This unfortunately was neither. after all this, at the end we were brought an incorrect bill overcharging us by almost 10.000 ft

The really only bright side to all this, was that everyone that we encountered and interacted with was very pleasant and kind. Otherwise this falls short in every...

The worst restaurant during the 2 week long trip, ahead of Field in Prague.

Def Will Not Return: terrible ribs, and the restaurant rebutted my review on Google Maps within an hour and claim $100 is their average cost of meal. Are you kidding?

We were eight minutes early than their 6pm opening, after visiting the Fisherman Bastion, they’re kind enough to seat us.

The smoke from their grill is suffocating - not sure this is daily occurrence or one time thing - the surrounding area is residential, plus the hotel. Outdoor seating only, with lots bugs 🐜 🐛 🐞 - I understand the meaning of 'outdoor' but most out door placed I dined, have no bugs, or very few.

Good stem: they’ve three markers on the glasses (a first for me), wondering which wine would pour to the top marker? Ours are to the bottom one. The young lady pours in uncertainty - pours, stops, looks, then repeat, as if it's her first time (a first time for me also). Three 🍷 we’ve are ok.

For food, we’ve:

Tuna and octopus appetizer: tuna is very delicious, would have it again. The octopus doesn’t taste fresh. - Ribs (45 min cooking time) is terrible with many gristle. - pork is ok - two sauces are good but have them better elsewhere The waitress did tell me that the ribs are chewy. I don’t mind chewiness and always go for bones - fish on the bone, short ribs, etc. are my faves. Not this one - don’t know what kind of meal they’re serving. Part of it is uncooked and after cooking more, it’s still too raw.

The bill came at 127.94€, with many taxes - UMO can you pls explain what are they? With terrible ribs, I seriously regret that we didn’t stay at Fisherman’s Bastion for dinner with killer views.

PS at 11:37pm -an hour or so after my posting after dinner, I got a reply or rebuttal from UMO (see the screenshot). For reason unbeknown to me, it isn't published.

Thank you, Umo for your reply. Among many points, they wrote

“… The prices are usually in Budapest average.”

Are they kidding?!?! I googled their gdp per capita which is $18,728 (WAY below Czech at $26,821, where we just visited; and dined at La Degustation, which is a real Michelle star restaurant - see my review there) and the US where we’re from, is at $70,248. We also dined at Hoppa last night, which was our first meal in Budapest, pls see their bill - no tons of so called taxes. WHO’s legit? Ok I visited Budapest in 1983 … it’s been a while … so many changes have been made. But pls … be real, and...

UMO is a Michelin recommended restaurant as of this review in November 2023. That's surprising based on the visit my table experienced.

From the moment you arrive you'll love the atmosphere. The entry courtyard with fire pit is inviting, warm, and excites for what's inside. The interior's massive skylight is a great experience to dine under. Staff compliment that experience very well by being very friendly, attentive, and helpful. We loved the service, but then came the food.

We were offered extra table salt as our meal arrived which is totally out of place for this caliber of restaurant. Most chefs cringe if a dish needs salt, but this restaurant openly offered some before we had a bite! We quickly found out why. Everything in the basket lacked flavor. The textures were perfect but everything tasted bland. If you ever lost your taste during covid this will be familiar. What's more, we were told two of the sauces were spicy- they were actually sweet. The wedge of lime shouldn't be the most flavorful part of your dish. I would be more specific about each item but nothing was notable. It all tasted like beige.

It's such a shame because their food looks excellent just like everything else in this restaurant. Unfortunately, the taste didn't live up to the excellence of everything else. I grew up in a Latin American household so I know what flavors to expect. If this was my first experience with Latin American flavor I'd have a bad perception of the cuisine. Overall, UMO settled for normal food and offering you...