Gilda Music Lounge — Restaurant in Bucharest

TLDR:😡False advertising, bland food and a tipping scam for desert. The owner addresses the bad comments but there is no improvement since the last few months whatsoever😶. Vegetarians, read explicitly!

The service: 👎Obvious Tourist trap with a bad aftertaste. Should have known that this was the case when I saw the employee standing in front of an open menu trying to get the people off the street and onto the very very small tables with promises for various options in the menu. After 5 days on the road, I did not want any more burgers, pizzas, pasta or fries and I was looking for some vegetarian option and I was assured that there would be Vegetarian soup by the employee on the street. This was the second sign that something was wrong. There's almost no restaurant on Earth that offers soups for dinner. Anyway, the hungry tourist in me overruled the reason and we decided to stay and get something. We had to switch one of the chairs since there was a wet spot on one of them. But the juice stain on the table sat there the whole time.

The food:🫤 I had to reconcile for a Greek salad due to lack of soup or even grilled vegetables. Again. The food came and it was simply okay. Nothing convincing you to come back or even try the desserts. But we were still charged for desert with the unsolicited tip added in the bill.

The dessert:🤮 The bill came with a 15% tip ADDED without any consent! And when we asked why it was added we got no response.

When I started giving reviews I wanted to share only good experiences and until this review I really did. But this experience gave me the reason to warn other of this type for bllsht. So please just read the reviews in advance....

Beware of Hidden Charges and Deceptive Practices!

I had a highly disappointing experience at this restaurant and feel compelled to share. My friend and I visited recently, ordering a lemonade, a beer, and a quesadilla. Since my friend doesn't speak Romanian, we communicated in English, which apparently made us targets for this establishment's questionable practices. When the bill came, we were in a rush to catch a train and didn’t have time to scrutinize it. I asked the waiter if the tip (bacsis) was included, and he assured me it was not. On the bottom of the bill, there were suggested tips of 5%, 10%, and 15%. I opted to leave a 10% tip and paid a total of 99 lei. Upon reviewing the bill later at home, I discovered that a 20% tip had already been included in the total (15 lei), and I had inadvertently added an additional 10% on top of that (9 lei), making this a tip of 24 lei for an order of 75 lei. This level of dishonesty is beyond unacceptable. I understand that it's partly my fault for not double-checking, but the restaurant's deceptive billing practices are outright exploitative. This experience has left me with a bad taste and a sense of being scammed. The restaurant should be ashamed of its underhanded tactics, which seem designed to take advantage of unsuspecting patrons. This isn't just about the extra money—I’m appalled by the blatant dishonesty. Please be cautious and thoroughly check your bills if you decide...

As a tourist I want to say, DO NOT GO HERE. Having medium quality food is not worth the service. The manager was extremely rude when we wanted to change seats at the start because the light was right on our eyes. She was also drinking alcohol during work and was still drinking as we finished. We were a group of 16 students (foreign), and when we wanted to pay for the meal she pretended we cannot pay each alone, saying we have to pay what's more than 200 euros (984.RON), using one card/cash and when we wanted to communicate about how that's not possible she shut us down. One of us said that it shouldn't be the case, knowing it's impossible having one person pay all that. She said it's the system, knowing they have a regular card-paying machine. It's just that they did not want to do extra maths. When we started arguing and panicking over the fact no one has that money all together, she became even ruder, which put some of us on edge, we were tired and we just wanted to go back to our hotel at that point. It took us 15mins until she said we can actually pay separately, which makes me question why say otherwise from the start. We feel so underappreciated as customers, especially since it's them who invited us in, more than 5 times while we were...