Suzie's — Restaurant in Goa

Bizarre. Suzie’s gave us a most bizarre and underwhelming experience.

To begin guests need to fill out a pre-order for their 5 course tasting menu - this and the impressive Instagram page built really high expectations and not having seen the other google reviews you have a sense of a great upcoming fine dining experience.

Once you select your dishes ( the menu seems to have not changed in a long time) there is an allergy questionaire, which was not taken into account.

When we arrived we were the first guests - 8pm and the restaurant was empty, with just one other table set for diners. This made us wonder why the need for the pre-questionaire, as this possibly causes people to not come, as the location is somewhat out of the way, but the interior is very unique and well done!

The cocktails were great, and the boys behind the bar were truly the stars of the night, they made the drinks really well, and had great service and hospitality skills.

Our first course arrived, quite abruptly and this was flavored breads with some dips, and rather disappointing as a first course! The dips were randomly portioned.

The rest of the meals were very mediocre, pork broth lacked any depth of flavour and was incredibly watery. The banana blossoms with mushrooms were cold, and void of any flavour, very few blossoms were on the dish. The lamb course was tiny and nothing like the dish on social media. This was shredded lamb (50g) on lumpy mash potato and a very rustic, uninspired sauce covering the meat.

Deserts were good!

The overall experience felt amateurish and as if the team have given up. The service was lackluster with no attention to detail - which is the back bone of fine dining! We were also told to keep the cutlery from our third course and use it at the mains! This is a first and something I would never hope to encounter again!

As allergens were not taken into account it caused delays in eating together. I requested for no tamarind and this was on the banana blossom dish. The main course - contained dairy which my wife has an intolerance to! There was quenelle of yoghurt on top of the lamb, and the lamb was on top mash - which also contained dairy. We thought it best to speak with the manager to make sure we knew what contained dairy and what didn’t and felt it unfair that the waitress had to deal with this, as she didn’t seem to know what was in each dish. However no manager came, even thought it seemed the owners were around, again really bizarre.

There is an unmentioned 8% service charge attached to the bill, which is outrageous and not deserved. Our overall bill was almost 7000 for 2 alcoholic drinks, 1 lemonade, and a four course meal with bread sharing for the starter. It makes one wonder how many people would return with a tasting menu being forced on them.

Overall it was a major disappointment, whilst the dining area is really cool and well thought out, the service, food and attitude needs a serious improvement and rethink. I believe this place could do very well if they removed the fantasy of running a fine dining establishment and focused on creating better singular meals and cocktails, as it is a place I would return to simply for the cocktails...

Me and my fiance went here for our engagement dinner, on a Friday evening, and it was absolutely fantastic.

We opted for the 5 course meal, which was roughly 2500 each, along with a couple of their signature cocktails, for a total bill of 6700.

We made a reservation a week in advance and paid an advance of 500 each, which was adjusted in the final bill amount.

We were asked to select our courses in advance, through an online form, and we each opted for different items for each course, to maximize the diversity.

My fiance is vegetarian, but I am not, so I opted mostly for non-veg choices while she obviously stuck to the veg ones.

Courses:

Amouse Bouche: This was a sharing platter, featuring mini rotis made of beetroot and leafy greens, served with a yogurt dip, pickles, salad, and chutney. It was innovative, unique, and reminded me of a distinctly Indian taste. Very lovely!

Starter:

We got the shakargandi and matar papdi chat, and the brie salad. Both items were exceptional, though the papdi chat was our least favourite course of the night.

Entree:

We got prawn ceviche in rice paper, and a pepper mushroom 'dukka' which was like a taco but made with a mini dosa. Again, both items were lovely. The prawn was among the best I have ever had.

Main:

We got the paprika chicken with mash, and the vegetable terrine. Chicken was amazing - tender and cooked perfectly. Most people don't know how to cook chicken correctly, but this one was just right.

Dessert:

We got the chocolate and raspberry cake, and a raspberry sorbet with cake (I forgot the actual names of the desserts). Both items were lovely, as expected, but one of them had meringue pieces which elevated the dish beyond excellent.

The drinks are hard to describe because they were very artisanal and complex, and their cocktail menu features an insane amount of special and signature cocktails.

Needless to say, our drinks were also unique and innovative and very, very good.

Service was elegant, smooth, quick, attentive, and polite.

Jerrin was a lovely host, and the pet kitten was a lovely bonus!

All in all, I could not recommend this place more. If you go here and don't like it, you're the one who doesn't know food, because Suzie's absolutely gets it.

Blown right out...

We had been greatly looking forward to this - we discovered the food at the Friday Night Market at Hilltop, and realised that it was delicious; then later tracked down where the restaurant actually WAS - down an unmadeup track - at the end of which was a delightful looking place, so we booked, for their regular BBQ night, at 7.30.

We were the first people there, and it felt that they were not ready to open. No-one greeted us or made us welcome at all. We asked about the BBQ and were told that it was still being prepared, but that there was no BBQ menu. The service was simply Terrible! The drinks menu states that they serve Indian beer, but the waiter told us that they didn't - foreign only! (Why do restauranteurs think that people who come to India only want to eat and drink things that are NOT from India??) We ordered a cocktail each and a (foreign!) beer. It took them 20 minutes to bring these, with us as the only people there. Eventually others arrived (they must have known that it only really started at 8.30 not 7.30.) We then ordered food - my wife from the BBQ, me from the 'Specials' board next to our table. 10 mins later, new waiter appeared "to take our order". We explained that we had already ordered, and the new waiter tells us my item (Okura, a vegi main), is off tonight. He was unable to explain why the previous waiter had taken an order for food that was not available, why he had not told us in the first place what (else) was not available (as other things were also not available) and why, 10 minutes after telling the kitchen that I had ordered something that was not available, not-one had returned to apologise and ask if I could order something else!! What did that 1st waiter take that order. Why is something listed on a blackboard as a special if is not available?! The main food when it arrived was very good (although the deserts were not anything special), but such slapdash service! The 2nd waiter (who told us that he was a) the manager, and b) was leaving that day to return to his home in the N of India) was much better, hence why the service gets 3...