Tsekh — Restaurant in Almaty

It was such an uneventful experience I even forgot about it. The first thing that was very off-putting is the smell in the dining room. I agree that the open kitchen concept is cool, but you need excellent ventilation for that. The whole place smells like twenty different dishes. I swear our clothes reeked of food for quite some time after leaving. The first time I've heard about this place, they advertised the best in town brew menu and heaven for beer lovers with more than 150 kinds of beer. When someone says something like that, I expect a rich draft beer selection and not a fridge full of canned beer. It turns out they have very few beers on tap, and 99% come in bottles and cans. I've been to bars in Almaty that offer way more beer on tap. There is a craft beer store three blocks away, and they have a better selection of foreign beers on tap and in the fridge. We tried a tester of their signature beer, and it tasted sour. Not in a good way like tart Lambic or Gueuze, but actually sour. So canned beer it was. Probably I should bring up the speed of the kitchen first. It became apparent that there is no such thing as serving food in courses. Okay, I can live with that. We ordered beef wellington and fried rice simultaneously and were told it would take 30 minutes for wellington. Guess what? Fried rice arrived 15 minutes after wellington. And, drum roll, it was cold in the middle! Arguably one of the simplest dishes out there, and they couldn't make it properly in 45 minutes. I don't know what to say. We ordered oat porridge to go and had to sit and wait for it after we already paid because it took them almost 30 minutes to make it. I've discussed with the waiter what steak I want, and I'm 100% sure I wanted ribeye, as I haven't ordered T-bone in years and planning on keeping it that way, but I ended up with the T-bone. I didn't return it for the simple reason that it would be awful for that piece of steak to go to waste. And to make things worse, for a reason unknown, they put Demi-Glace on top of it. Why would you do that to a nice slice of meat? Serve it on the side if you want to, but don't ruin it like that. Very frustrating. Oh, and about Vorschmack. I thought we are well past the deconstruction of classic dishes in 2021. Leaving an egg out of the mixture and serving it separately results in a very odd dish—nothing to do with the classic Vorschmak. I would only come here again for desserts and fruit liqueurs. All three fruit liqueurs and Pavlova were great. But I definitely won't be coming back. The whole experience was awful. As I mentioned before, if you choose to create hype around your establishment, you must live up to it, and Tsekh failed...

We ordered hamburger and margarita. The taste of burger was average and pizza was bad. When we check the bill the prices were different from our menu. We warn them. They controlled it and realized that there was two menu. Our waitress was really panicked. Some managers came to check us. To sum up they just cut the waitress tip I guess. The difference was more btw. They waited us about 4 min on the casa. And they did not say bye to us....

Food is not good. A complete joke.Sreak was horrible.The sausages was tiny for the cost. It looked like appetizer and not a main dish. Cocktails and location is good. Watch the bill. Make sure you get charged for what paid for. Some questionable prices on my bill. I definitely won't be coming back or recommending this place to anyone. This place is not cheap. My bill for 3 people was more than 4 people I had at higher end...