Arco by Paco Pérez — Restaurant in Gdansk

🔴 Big disappointment

I enjoy visiting restaurants and tasting new food. This time with my boyfriend, we were excited to go to Arco and try something new. We chose the tasting menu "Felicidad" with 15 courses to have an overview of different dishes. Let me point out some features below:

▪️ Reservation - pre-booking was needed with payment of 300 PLN per person. Surprisingly, we've never had to pay anything in advance in any other "high-standard" restaurant. Still, we accepted this because every restaurant has the right to set up its own rules.

▪️ Locations - the restaurant is located in the business center (Olivia Star). This building has office spaces, other restaurants, and a viewing deck. All the people who visit the viewing deck have to go through a security check (like at the airport) and check if they don't bring any bombs. It wasn't a very welcoming entrance. At least customers who have reservations at Arco go directly to the elevator without any check. It's a bit funny because anyone who wants to bring a bomb to this building can book a table at Arco and go there without any checking. So, the security there doesn't make any sense to me.

▪️ Interior design - nicely done & classy, still nothing exceptional. Some elements could be improved because if Arco represents Spanish cuisine, it would be nice to see some details from this country. A stone used for serving a dessert is not the best example of Spanish design.

▪️ Panorama view - overrated because this part of Gdańsk is boring. Mostly, you can see old neighborhoods (Zaspa, Brzeźno, Przymorze, and Żabianka) with some new modern office buildings around (Olivia Business Center & Alchemia). Additionally, you can see Tricity forests and the Gdańsk Bay with some transport ships, tankers, fishing vessels, and other units. I liked the sunset and the view of the forests.

▪️ Music - it was ok, pleasant: classical/jazz/ambient, and didn't disturb the conversation.

▪️ Service/personnel - they were ok, some professionals and some students. They were friendly and did their best to ensure that customers were served well and treated nicely. There was one annoying behavior that could be changed. One waitress brought a new cotton napkin whenever my boyfriend went for a cigarette or to the bathroom. We spent around 4 hours there, so they replaced about 10 clean napkins during the night, and there was no logical reason to exchange them.

▪️ Food - I can't believe what we experienced, such untasty dishes lacking flavor. Most of them looked nice and only looked nice, but the taste was disappointing because there was no flavor & no passion. I felt like eating badly processed & heated food that was nicely served. The money paid for those dishes was not worth this experience at all! It was like a bad joke. To sum up, 3 out of 15 dishes tasted good, and the rest were disappointing. It's a shame to charge over 640 PLN for untasty food where the raw ingredients cost probably 40 PLN.

▪️ Congratulations to the marketing team for ensuring Arco is positioned well on the internet. You can trick people once, but they are smart, and when choosing the restaurant next time, they most definitely will go somewhere else.

▪️ There are many other restaurants in Gdańsk that serve unique & delicious food, and the prices are adequate to the taste, service, interior design,...

To start I want to describe a bit of food, for starters we got a potato salad that was pretty interesting, a canollo with some cheese and coffee - cold and very bitter from the coffee extraction and a portobello asiette that was freezing cold, couldn’t taste the mushroom at all because of the temperature, and all starters where lacking salt. After that came bread with signature olive oil that was very good and a tuna salad. Tuna was chopped in 2mm cubes, 3 different caviars - trout, olives and lemon, drowned in dashi sauce (bitter from overboiling kombu and just emulsified with xanthan to a consistency) - again no salt at all, no texture, whole dish was very mild and soft, didn’t eat half of it. After that came a pasta with potatoes, clever play on rigatoni with potato foam from syphon and a bit of cheese notes. The best dish on the menu by far. But also mild and hard to eat the whole thing. Risotto with roasted bell peppers , straciatella and mussels… that was the biggest dish, probably a size of a lunch portion in a city center restaurant. And to be honest, something I would expect from a lunch restaurant not a star reviewed restaurant. Also left half of it. After that the long awaited main course, duck with sweet potato purée, sea bukthorn gelly and demi glace. Duck was chewy, skin wasn’t crispy, sea buckthorn gelly made on agar that lacked taste and was pointless for me to even mention in the menu, because I had a hard time to feel that it’s sea buckthorn. Pre dessert was the second best dish on the menu, nice play on classic polish apple pie. Main dessert was more about the plate that headchef designed than about the taste, I believe it was milk ice cream, two types of ganache - white and dark chocolate and some raspberry coulis. It was okay, but again… not a one star worthy dessert. Service was okay, nothing special, nobody asked us how we liked the food for the whole dinner and they were very stiff. They acted like they learnt quotes about the food and that’s it. We weren’t asked if we would like to have a look at the wine list, we asked for it in the middle of the dinner and got nice wine in the end. In the toilet towels finished and it was mid second seating, so I’m guessing they should be there. Big rotation of staff within our table lead to a lack of personal connection with our waiter, after bread serving we had crumbs on our table for around 30 minutes before someone cleaned up the table. I was with an empty glass of water/wine for most of the dinner as well. They spoke very quietly as well so we missed a lot of the explanations. Staff seamed stressed/inexperienced for that kind of place. They didn’t make us feel comfortable,...

Expensive Macdonalds.

I was very, very disapointed in this place, and now i will tell you why.

When you enter, there is alot of hazzle just to get to the table. When you sit down you are very much surrounded by the waiters who gives you alot of attention. Your expectations raise because of the view, and the interior design. But this is just the fasade.

You pick the meny you desire, and it looks nice and have interesting names etc.

Once you get your first course in, you kind of understand that the low quality that is beeing used is a way to make you pay for very cheap and normal ingrediences for a extremely high price. First course was tasteless, but the waiters give you kind of a "fantasy" story about the pathetic dish infront of you. And it didnt stop there, dish after dish was more or less low grade ingredients with no taste what so ever, but still the stories about them was getting to a redicilous state. It looks beutiful (sometimes) and this is the ONLY thing it does, if i can compare this to a reality, i can compare a microwave dish to what was beeing served in a nice way. The passion was lost, and if i wanted to get cold soup with frozen peas in a nice way, i could ask my 12 year old child to do it better. I have to say that this whole setup feels like a big scam, and the 300zl per person just to reserve the table is the owners knowing this is not worth more then 20zl, and the reason for the 300zl reservation would be for you not to leave the table in the middle of this scam. So if you go there you are basicly paying their rent, and pay a high price to have a person smiling and beeing nice to you, and feed you with lies about something that is so low quality without any flavors what so ever. Keep away.. Those who actually devote their lives into cooking food with passion would be a shamed that a place like this exist. Where does the scams of this world ends? Be a shamed for this, and STOP removing the true grades that people are writing! This is not Ok, and people go there to celebrate a special night with hard earned money, and you disapoint them like this.. People who read this, do not enter this fake place.

Thank you very much, i ate noodles when i came home, and that tasted better then this whole meny togheter.. And...