Simbio — Restaurant in Bucharest

TOTALLY IMPRESSED. First of all you would never find this place without google. You would pass it, even when you are in front of it and you would never walk in there. This is what it makes so special. A house in a messed up area. You can park on the streets free of charge. Nothing fancy there, a clinic and what ever around there. Then this fence, some stylish house in the background. Just shady, hard to believe that the pics you saw are somewhere around you. And then you walk up the stairs and BAM! There is a super nice dressed and cool place. Nice architecture, cool design and great view to a little garden.

From there on you can either stay inside and use one of their rooms, you can also take a look into their clean kitchen, but you can also walk out to the amazing garden area. Trees, green in the summer, cool accessories and very very nice warm atmosphere. We ordered pancakes, pouched eggs, sandwich and a carrot cake. All was great, nothing to complain. The servers were nice, friendly and polite. Speak fluent English and you will feel good. The coffee was too little for my taste but good quality. They also served milk for the kids, that is very polite. Seems to be a little unusual for Bucharest.

One more thing. Going downstairs you will end up in a cool bar. I believe this place must be outstanding for private events!!

I liked it a lot. The prices are decent and that is a place that I would definitely tell my friends about. Just because of what I said about ending up...

Sometimes it baffles me how certain restaurants are rated 4 and above out of 5. So unfortunately my experience was a 1 or below. We called ahead to reserve a table but they said they couldn’t take a reservation but we could wait at the bar until a table becomes available. Fine.

I arrived at 830pm and the place was almost empty, so I have no idea why they were not taking reservations and making out like the place was busy.. Despite us changing tables a few times as the air conditioning was on quite high, the waiting staff were pretty much ignoring us with no attentiveness at all. Eventually one of them slumbered over to take our order with the friendliness of a teenager who’s just had his xbox taken away by his parents. After the bored waiter took our order and walked off to continue having jokes and high-fiving his colleagues we began our wait...

20mins later they arrived with the beer and wine I ordered. Not sure if they had pass customs to get it to us but thank God it arrived.

Another 30mins passed and finally the burgers arrived! You’d think with 50mins they would have prepared the most beautiful work of art in burger form but unfortunately not (see photo attached).

Anyway, the food. Well 1 sentence should do it:

Stale oversized bread, dry overcooked meat, bacon bits with the texture of biltong.

Here’s the bonus: the avocado had gone bad but was still served...

I find myself saying 'meh' yet again. A lot of hype around the place, but was definitely not impressed. Had the house burger. Buns were delicious, you could tell they put eggs in there, and the tomatoes nice and fresh. And that's where it stops. The patty was well-done, which is ok for most I guess. For only ten courses and some salads in the menu, I'd like to be asked how I like my patty.

While well-done, it was burnt on the outside and quite bitter. Led me to believe that they don't clean the hot plate often. Then they sprinkled some stale bacon shreds on top, whose texture had nothing to do with a burger. Some onion chutney, a salad leaf, a couple of good tomato slices, and you end up with a 4 inch tall stackup. Inedible without instruments, which is always a bummer.

The "fries" were the worst though. I think it's very hard to make something more vile than those fries. They're actually baked, unevenly if anything, and unseasoned. The only evidence of any effort put in those potatoes was a couple of oregano leaves I found on a piece.

The décor is bland, the acoustics are very bad and quite unnerving (very noisy for a side-room with four tables). In conclusion, I won't be going there too soon,...