Surfers Visby — Restaurant in Gotland Municipality

Surfers was a suggestion on Happy Cow when my wife and I were visiting Visby for about 10 days. Decent vegan food was hard to find as everything is so meat and dairy oriented. We found a few places for food but needed protein other than the obligatory burger and hummus so Surfers was a destination for tofu. (We did buy smoked tofu at a grocery store to go with the breakfast buffet at your hotel as 80% of what they served was meat, cheese, and items made with dairy) Our first visit was good with a server guiding us through the menu and suggesting how many dishes to order. Of note are the number of dishes that are very spicy by default which we found other places. What's the use if you're mouth is numb (as a server told us at another restaurant describing one of their dishes said would happen from the first bite) and can't properly enjoy the food? We found the food to be fresh with some originality especially with the use of mushrooms and sauces. A standout was the crispy tofu in a caramelized soy-ginger sauce. We ordered this on our second visit but it came out too crispy which was a bit of a disappointment. We ordered the edamame on our second visit but noticed a certain pepper was listed and our server again told us it's very spicy so we ordered it without and it was very good as the edamame had a nice char which imparted a unique flavor. We were in Visby during Medieval week where places were very busy and Surfers was no exception. We were told that without a reservation, the best chance for a table was to show up right at 5 when they open with limited outside seating. We were fortunate to get a 2-top inside at the bar area and able to make an early reservation for our last night. Surfers is a must if you enjoy Asian style food and a vegan in...

Just a fair warning to anyone thinking of going to Surfers, it's a rip-off. The prices are way too high for the serving sizes. A cocktail was 125 sek, and you can down it in just a few sips. As for the food, everything is 88 sek, which in this case can be a bad thing. As an example, the serving of dumplings is in total only 3 small dumplings for 88 sek...That's about 30 sek for one tiny ball of filling wrapped in dough... Really? For those 88 sek you could get more value for your money somewhere else. As for the flavour, the dumplings were pretty bland and generic, the garlic sauce was way too salty, soy sauce had a ton of vinegerette in it and it was overpowering. The rabbit was cold, but the sauce it came with was very tasty. I didn't even have the willingness to tell the waitress all of that, I just wanted to go outside.

The whole thing was just dissapointing.

Other than that, the staff was nice, and the place was fancy, but really dark. Please, please, please, save your money and take your hungry stomach...

Most importantly the food was fantastic. We ordered the aubergines, chicken in red oil, shrimp balls, ribs, dandan noodles. Even the rice was cooked well and appreciated the rice coming in separate bowls. Cocktails were good, really liked the Chongqing heat. However the alcohol free alternatives were quite boring, like apple juice with a peppery edge.

The service was very professional personally, quick and simple, which was refreshing given how bad service has become standard nowadays. A big disappointment as well as being unappetising was with the servers scraping leftovers onto a tray behind me, clearly visible to the others in my group.

Atmosphere was cosy and inviting. Even with a full house it was still possible to have intimate conversations...