Pastoe Foodbar — Restaurant in Utrecht

I struggled a bit with how many stars to give because while the food is good and the decor is great, there are some big drawbacks. In short I’d say that it isn’t so much a place to eat as it is a place to hang out while snacking. First, when we started ordering, a large number of our top choice menu items weren’t available. Then the dishes itself were small (despite being labeled for 2–3 people), and the wait between plates was incredibly long - around an hour for the first dish, then another 10–20 minutes between each one. So we’d finish a plate pretty fast and then just sit, talk and wait. But we did come hungry so it was a bit frustrating. Service was mixed: some staff were great, but our main server wasn’t particularly welcoming. We didn’t have an English menu, but Google Translate worked fine. As for the food itself - the chicken was dry, but the steak was excellent, we ended up ordering more of it. We had mixed opinions on the beet tartare - worth trying though. Pizza, smoked burrata, and tuna steak were fine. I don’t regret going, but I...

Saddest eggs Benedict I’ve ever had!

Let me explain. I came here on a weekday for lunch, after having tried this place a few months ago for a coffee and was very disappointed that I had to wait 12 minutes for any staff to take my order of one cup of coffee. So today I decided to give it another chance. Again, it took long for serving staff to find us. The restaurant was about half full and there was one (!) person doing the serving. Finally made our order of eggs Ben. My goodness what a disappointment. The bread was simple square bread (NOT Brioche). The spinach spread all over it clearly came from the freezer. The ham used was circular, like those vacuum packed ones you get in the supermarket. The eggs were tiny, the hollandaise sauce was very stingy. It needed some salt but there was no salt on the table. They dare to charge €13,50 for this plate. Oh, and the ‘fresh’ orange juice tasted diluted. Overall the experience was, again, very disappointing. I liked this restaurant back when it was De Zagerij, but I won’t be returning under the...

So the Bitterballs came in still frozen inside, not a good start to the evening.

This place feels like it was set up professionally with a good menu and formula, but the chef and management then left the mostly young staff to fend for themselves, and it's not gone well.

Some of the dishes were nice and some where like the frozen bitterballs not so good or too greasy.

All in all this is the modern plague of serial restaurant entrepreneurship, slap together a formula, get some professionals to make the menu and make the decor nice, farm it for maximum profits and move on to the next thing.

the profits were also very clear in the tiny portions, "for two, shared dining style" actually means a small portion even for one. We ended up paying for 4 people 320 euros and lets be honest once you spend that you might start to feel filled up.

On the whole I'd say avoid for something less formulaic, managed as a restaurant not ...