Locale Kaap — Restaurant in Rotterdam

Major disappointment. After reading their website we couldn’t wait to make reservations and have dinner for my bday at Lokale Kaap.

Our starters quickly tempered our expectations. My gf had the “schelvis ceviche” and I had the “gerookte zalmforel”. Mind you, these 2 starters were €27,- and as I don’t mind paying for good food at all, unfortunately that’s not what we got. My gf couldn’t even taste her fish because the dish was way too sour. The “zalmforel” was 6 tiny rolled up pieces of the fish, on 2 a very narrow pieces of roasted (dry) white bread. The dish wasn’t supposed to be warm, but this was cold, straight from the fridge. I couldn’t taste the “zalmforel” at all which usually is a quite flavorful fish. All I could taste was that the bread was roasted, a cold fish-like substance and mascarpone.

Then we had to wait for more than an hour for our next course. My gf had the “fruit de mere XXL” and I had the “bouillabaisse”. My soup was not hot, mildly warm at most. 1 tiny piece of salmon, 1 prawn, 5 clams and 5-7 mussels. The prawn was tasteless as was the salmon and half of the mussels had no meat in them. The clams were good. It took me 5m to eat to fish in that soup and couldn’t be bothered to eat rest of the soup as it was al ready too cold. The waitress did offer to warm it up, which she did; but for me the fun was over. My gf tried a few bites, but wasn’t bothered either.

My gf’s mixed seafood turned out to be a regular one, because they somehow missed she wanted the XLL one. She gave me half her clams as that was the only enjoyable part of my bouillabaisse. Her (2) prawns were both raw ffs!! The waitress offered her new ones “they’ll be ready in 4-5mins” she said. 20 minutes later I asked what was up with my gf’s prawns as we didn’t see the cooks do anything. Turned out they had ready been placed on the shelf from where food is served. Nobody had bothered to serve it, or nobody notified anyone, all the while one of the (2) cooks was scrolling through his phone.

The prawns were served, and I don’t know if this was done intentionally (to mess with us bc we returned the raw prawns), but the cooks didn’t clean the prawns this time. Mf was done at that point, but I (still being quite hungry after my 2 €46,- in total courses) decided to crack the backs open en scrape out the prawn’s gut myself. They tasted “soapy”, and that was it for me too. We asked for the bill and left disappointed, a major understatement..

Something seemed “off”. The elderly woman who seemed to be in charge (owner?) was clearly not in a good place. It seemed something was going un between her and the chef. The chef seemed uninspired, was cleaning more than he was cooking. As if he was in a hurry to get out of there. I also noticed a couple next to us, who had come in before us and had also had to wait for their food a loooong time when I overheard the waitress saying something like that they had ordered the identical 2 dishes as another table, which had caused confusion in the kitchen causing them to only prepare one of the orders (for 1 instead of 2 tables).

My gf’s seafood dish was ok-ish. It’s hard to put your finger on it, was missing “love”, inspiration, dedication, I don’t know. It was very simple and very little effort was made while cooking this dish. A 5/10. My gf was glad they forgot the (half) lobster (xxl part of the dish) as at least she wouldn’t have to go through the experience of eating an (at most) mediocre lobster for an extra €25,-

We experienced nothing that reminded us of how they describe their restaurant on their website. We paid €116,- and walked out hungry, with literally and figuratively a bad taste in our mouths. I never eat fishermansfriends, but this time I had 2 in row, suddenly realizing why these mints must have earned their name: they will take care of a bad fishy taste in your mouth.

To the owners (if you’re reading this): step up your game, get a new chef. I know you know you messed up big time and that the whole experience is not what you are trying to sell on...

Booked table for 4 persons(family) for New Year's Eve. Starter was OK, but 2 persons took the special new year's eve menu. This main dish (several types of fish) was really terrible! It was mainly shellfish and all cold and not much. Quality was very poor. Also the desert of same menu was terrible. Management in restaurant was really chaotic. We needed to wait 30 minutes before we had a table, despite our reservation. We received 2 wrong starters and they did not know which next dish of the menu we ordered. Staff was friendly, except 1 older lady (owner ?). She just served dishes and cleared the table without saying anything. Because of the special new year's eve menu we ordered, we received coffee and a kind of champagne to take with us to watch the fireworks at New Year's Eve. Coffee was really terrible (in restaurant itself it was good) and the 'champagne' was really, really terrible, very acid. In summary: terrible restaurant, based on quality much too expensive, not...

I reserved a table for 3 at around 16:40, slightly earlier than their opening time. The staff was friendly and told us that there would be a table available around 20:30.

After arriving there at 20:15, the only table matching our reservation wanted to order desert... We were then asked to wait. During our wait which lasted a bit past the reservation time. It wasn't great news, but the restaurant staff offered us to wait outside with a drink, an offer which we gladly accepted. (We interpreted it as a restaurant of high quality, which is why demand was high).

After getting in and ordering, one thing that we got struck with is the very enjoyable and friendly ambiance. The food there was amazing and the staff incredibly friendly!

We would gladly go there again, it was a...