Haute Pepper Restaurant — Restaurant in Bucharest

Food: 8/10 Service: 7/10 Atmosphere: 9/10

Price quality in balance. Highly recommend their Dessert of the Day: Pavlova!

Due to a google review with picture, I decided to order the Seafood Paella. Unfortunately it was presented differently than I expected as seen on the google review picture. This was a bit of a bummer. Nevertheless it tasted very balanced and rich of seafood.

Aside from our dishes we ordered two local chardonnay bottles. It is a must try chardonnay! A balanced and round chardonnay. Slightly towards light sparkling.

The staff was very attentive and kept an eye on our wines to refill.

However at the end of our dinner we asked for the check. Perhaps one of the staff was a bit in a hurry and kinda threw the bill on the table. Mentioned the total amount of the bill, and continued by saying "plus 12% tip?". I have never encountered such a situation, where you dine in at a pretty formal restaurant, and the staff negotiates the tip. Especially considering Haute Pepper was recommended by Gault Millau in 2018. In a professional setting, tip must never be pushed. I wonder if they did this because they knew we were tourists?

If they did not push us the 12% we would be willing to even tip more as we really enjoyed the rest of the night! Too bad the end ended up so unprofessional. We hope they can learn from this situation, and not push customers for tip. Have confidence about your service team...

If you don't have a suitable table for your customers don't agree to make them a reservation. Although we had a reservation for two, we were offered a table with four chairs under the stairs next to a hanger full of other people's jackets. The hanger was about 20 cm away from the table. In a few minutes the bartender came and said that we could also sit at another table in a corner. We got up but realized that the table in the corner was neighbored by another one, already occupied, that was less than 50 cm away. Imagine sitting at a table in a restaurant that calls itself "Haute something" and being able to eat from other people's plate without any effort. Not only that a normal social distancing (and I'm not talking about the pandemic) was out of the question, not even a minimum of personal space was respected in that matter. So we sat again at the first table (under the stairway) and suddenly another man from the restaurant's personnel came to tell us with a rude tone that we WERE TOLD TO SIT at the table in the corner. He didn't ask as to, his attitude was like giving an order and shaming us for it. Dear sir, you should revise you're attitude towards the customer. We were offered a bad table and then a worse one, and as a desert, a wonderful lecture on how to make your...

This would have been a 5-star review if it weren't for one of the waiters. It would've also been a 3 if it weren't for another server, who compensated for the lack of professionalism coming from the 1st waiter.

If it matters for anything/anyone, the professional one was an elderly looking fellow with gray hair, and the unprofessional one was a tall, skinny guy with a short haircut and dark, curly hair. Kudos to the gray-haired server, who basically at one point took over, because he saw our dissatisfaction with the service provided by his colleague, who not only displayed negligence by failing to attend to our needs, but also appeared disturbed by the fact that we were seeking his assistance.

Food was tasty and came in large portions.

The location is premium. It's literally situated near the house of the parliament, in the heart of the city center.

Prices are fair, all things considered.

It's a thumbs up for us, and we'll definitely return, but guys, educate some of your servers. Don't fire them, but help...