ëlgr Restaurant — Restaurant in Gardens

Unfortunatelly disappointing 😞 In short: We experienced overpromising and underdelivering. Good taste but food barely warm, contemporary basics missing on menu, friendly but inattendive service. This place has potential but seems currently to be pushed and overrated.

The whole story: After we had a look on the website, the photos and the ratings, we were really curious and excited to visit ëlgr . Unfortunatelly we got disappointed in several topics. First the good things: the location is really nice styled, the service is friendly and the taste of our main course was really good. But why then the two star rating? It was a lot of several points. The menu is not really selfexplaining, so you always have to ask the waiter, what exactly it is. Eg "Pork, Sweat Pepper, Baby Potato, ... " does not really tell which part of pork and how prepared. Also not nice - there was not a single vegetarian main course on the menu. The only that was close to that was a pizza, which was told us to be meant as an in between course. But honestly - if I like pizza, I would not go to a restaurant that states on it's website to have a fusion cuisine of Scandinavia and South Africa (which in total I had not the feeling that it was). We ordered our starters, which arrived at our table several minutes after order. Unexpected and to be honest strangely fast. Nor that we questioned ourselfs how freshly prepared it can be within this short time, it didn't give us time to really "arrive" at our dinner spot. Also, from the impression we had of the level ëlgr would be compared with other restaurants of certain level, we would have enjoyed to receive some kind of Amuse-Bouche - but okay. After the starter we asked to change to any other available table, as on the next table there was a couple with a person obviously totally drunk at the beginning of their dinner, very loudly talking and sometimes almost screaming. After that we continued with the dinner. The Pork is what I can tell about and its taste was really delicious. Unfortunately our both mains were not hot at all, they were barely warm. On the other hand it was what in Germany or Austria is called "Schweinerollbraten" and there it's always served hot - but for sure not that fancy. Again I was asking myself about the Scandinavian South African fusion or at least influenced cuisine, stated on the website. When we were finished our empty plates were on the table for a very long time, while several service employees passed by or were even talking with each other while standing right in front of our table. Unfortunately very inattendive, which was ongoing for about 15 Minutes. After our empty plates were removed we were left with the menu to choose our desserts. We were really interested in trying some of that desserts. To be honest, the desserts on the menu made us more curious than the mains of the day. Unfortunately we were left again by ourselfs for a very long time without taking our order. At a certain point we decided to just ask for the invoice by the next chance and go to a different restaurant to finish the dinner with desserts there. To be honest - if removing empty plates and taking order for desserts takes 4 times longer than the time from taking order and serving starter, there is something wrong.

Unfortunately we will neither visit this place again, nor recommend to go there. There are a lot of other options around Cape Town where the overall experience is...

AVOID!!! AVOID!! AVOID!!

Let me save you the Time and Money. A friend suggested we take a friend visiting from London for dinner to this restaurant and beyond my reservations about this suggestion, I gave her the benefit of the doubt)I had always passed this dimly lit and always empty restaurant for years and never yearned to dine there). All my reservations and suspicions came crashing on us when we had the WORST experience at this establishment. A myriad of bad incidences but at the top of them was 1) Inattentive waitress 2) We had to request for them to clear the table 3) It was very hot in this restaurant 3) The music was inappropriate for this dining environment and it had our entire table on edge. 4) Passive aggressive attitude when we raised our dissatisfaction. We were upsold the chefs pairing menus which they failed to serve at a reasonable time. We had a 19:30 booking and the last party at our time arrived just before 8pm and we were still not served the rest of the course at 22:30 and compounded by the bad service and watching table covers turn around us we wondered if we had ordered anything out of scope. We were told that the big table they were all serving caused a delay in the kitchen(So why are we in it and was this their first big table ? )- The sommelier is courteous, knowledgeable and friendly(possibly why we lasted that long at that terrible establishment) If you are self loathing, have money to burn and time to throw away - Go at your own peril, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you want to have a great dining experience (or something worthy of your time and money ) GO ANY AND EVERYWHERE ELSE AND AVOID THIS ESTABLISHMENT (yes I’m shouting - I’m angry...

I made a reservation two weeks ago for 19:30 and upon arrival (19:27) were told to wait while our table was being set up - we were only seated at 19:45.

Our drinks took 25min to be made and arrive, we were sat right next to the bar. Presentation was not what you would expect when paying over R100. Drinks were very strong and the "Kick the Kettle" cocktail with the salt and rosemary was unpalatable due to the overpowering thyme and salt.

We watched as other newly-seated tables were brought bread yet we had to ask for it after our drinks had arrived. No sorry, just a sigh.

Our single bottle of still water was opened and poured by the waiter in a matter of seconds before he took it away to store in a communal ice bucket (this had wine, bubbles and other water bottles in). We did not receive a single refill and were ultimately charged for 2x Bottles of water.

Presentation of ALL main dishes (pork, kinglklip) was sub-par and felt pre-made. Even though the restaurant was max-pax our mains arrived quicker than our drinks.

Our waiter, the front of house and the manager on the night were unattentive, not friendly and appeared to 'look past' our table of 4.

Our empty plates and empty glasses were not cleared for 15min.

We asked for the bill after waiting at our cleared table for 10min. The bill arrived 28min later, only to have an incorrect number of waters on it. No apology from the waiter, just an eye-roll and audible sigh.

10/10 would not recommend this place. We were disappointed and left your restaurant with a foul taste in our mouths and nothing good to remember...