Kooks 2 K2 Mountain Kitchen — Restaurant in New Taipei

So, so worth the trek up to Tamsui mountains! I got the veggie burger (tasted convincing!) With housemade onion rings, and my friend got the pesto chicken burger (also homemade pesto!) With a heap of French fries and ranch dressing sauce! (Both around 270 I believe). So, so good and accurately representative of damn good American food. Yes, more expensive prices than other joints but utterly worth it for the quality and very filling portions! English speaking staff and menus available, outdppr bathrooms and wide menu including breakfast, bar food, coffee and alcoholic drinks and vegan food. But the highlight- the cinnamon roll. Ridiculously absurdly massive and fantastic- gooey, warm, fluffy bread layered with cinnamon nut filling and smothered in ample frosting. For 90 ntd?? I was shocked! Absolutely amazing deal especially as you could easily serve it to three or four people! Owners are super nice and friendly, plenty of lovely and atmospheric seating, and today due to it being the Halloween weekend lots of adorable kids were running around in costumes which was lovely to see! The lemon tart slices look huge and amazing and so do the blondes with lemon icing and dried cranberries... yum!! Definitely dreaming about those cinnamon rolls- inarguably the best in all of Taiwan!! Absolutely coming here more often- I'm in love, and I almost never bother with American style...

I'm just confused at the high rating as I can't even see how this place might once have been good. Maybe we were just unlucky but I'd be surprised.

To list just a few of the issues we found: smelly and dirty plastic glasses used for the drinks (and cheap looking but that's not the main complaint) extremely artificial tasting smoothie (chocolate chip toffee smoothie, and even sweeter than it sounds) extremely loud banging of plates from washing up which is done right next to where people sit inside all the children's toys left all over the place (see photo) a chocolate croissant had been left outside on a table and ants were crawling all over it (it was still there when we left 30 mins later) when we asked the waitress for the check (she wasn't doing anything at that exact moment) she said "wait a moment" and then turned around and decided to wash a glass (nobody was waiting for the glass, she just put it to the side afterwards)

So, in summary, we weren't very happy and didn't stay very long. Suffice to say, we were originally going to eat a snack but we changed our minds and went elsewhere.

Let's hope things can improve because it could be a lovely location and great for getting out...

Where to start with this place, I used to consider this a nice restaurant but the quality has dropped so bad. First, when we arrived the place was empty and somehow the service was so bad that we had to go look for the waiters to give them our orders since none of them bothered to pay attention if we were ready to order. (They were like four waiters inside the kitchen just talking)

Secondly, The place is dusty and full of bugs. It is clear that they couldn’t care less about the higiene of the outdoors area.

Finally, the food is way too expensive for its quality. We ordered kooks’ classic burger and chili fries. the burger was bad, it was not tasty at all and the patty was stiff and chewy. The chili fried were even worst, they were completely tasty less and the chili seemed reheated like it was microwaved. Extremely Disappointing. The worst of it all is that all that cost a grand total of 880 ntds🤦‍♂️

We regretted not going for McDonald’s instead of this...