I went here today after seeing the glowingly positive reviews, and it being highly recommended. I was really excited to try the food, which I'd been told was really nice. I'm not trying to be harsh with my review here, just giving my honest feedback.
First dish was aubergine fries. Very, very oily and absolutely drenched in a sickly, heavily seasoned and very salty mayonnaise. Overall the dish was far too salty, overbearing and really quite bad.
The next dish was a "street food" octopus tentacle. I probably should have read the description more closely and avoided this one. Why does octopus need to be deep fried with batter? It doesn't. It's a delicious ingredient that really just needs some subtle flavours, you don't have to do too much to it. This was again oily, very heavy, and covered in that seasoned mayonnaise again. It was a very good, generous cut of octopus, but I just can't understand why anybody would do that to it. Whilst eating it, I kept thinking about how nice it would be to enjoy that octopus tentacle on its own with some lemon and some salad.
Finally, the vegetarian burgers. I know the standard for vegetarian burgers is quite low, so I wasn't expecting anything that good. But this was very poor. The bun was enormous, much bigger than the burger. The burger was tiny, very thin, deep fried to the point of being dark brown and basically having no recognisable flavour whatsoever apart from salt and oil. I honestly don't even know what the burger was made of. Cheese? I have no idea. With a large slice of tomato, or perhaps some chutney or something a bit more upbeat and sharp, it might have been okay, but instead it came with a rather odd kind of cheesy sauce (I think, not sure) and a handful of rocket lettuce, neither of which helped at all. On the side were some tolerable but not particularly well-done fries. I had to force this meal down, as I don't like to waste food, but by this point I was experiencing a real salt and oil overload. Honestly a pretty gross meal with a bad aftertaste.
The service was good. The meals were prepared very quickly, which was great. It wasn't the friendliest service I've ever received, but not the worst either. Overall it was fine. I've worked in restaurants and didn't enjoy it much, it can be hard to fake enthusiasm all day. The speed of the service is the most important thing, and it was very fast and efficient.
The atmosphere inside was nice! Definitely the best part of it. Very nice looking restaurant, very clean, nice chairs, nice tables. They've done a great job on the design, and it matches the look of the food.
Perhaps we went on a bad day and it's normally better. I don't know. I'm really confused as to why the reviews are so positive. I'm not a fussy eater at all, I enjoy most things. But I felt pretty bad about spending 65€ (for two of us) on that. I really didn't enjoy it at all.
If this was a struggling restaurant I would have just said to myself "they tried", and kept my opinions to myself. But I feel like with the astronomical hype about the place, relative to other restaurants in the area, it would only be fair to give what I think is an honest criticism. They will continue to do well regardless of my review, and clearly I am in a minority in not having enjoyed it.
EDIT: In response to the owner: I wasn't expecting classic dishes, I'm open to trying new things. I generally prefer traditional food, but I also enjoy lots of modern, fusion food and other things. Above all, the flavour profile of the food was just very poor and completely oppressive. It is possible to make modern fusion food without drenching everything in oil and mayonnaise, and had it been done well I probably would have enjoyed at least some of it. In particular, the burger was extremely poor. I would not expect a veggie burger to be "traditional" because there is no such thing as a traditional veggie burger. I simply expected it...
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