Gypsy Cafe — Restaurant in Lincoln

Before I start this review I would like to say I am a New Yorker, and have dined in some of the best restaurants in the world (right here in NYC). From the dingiest of places to fancy 5* restaurants. First of all it is incredibly hard to get a reservation at this place, which is fine with me. We called 2 days in advance that a group of 6 people will be dining. We were given a time, 8:00PM. Arrived promptly but we had to wait 30 minutes to be seated, again this was all fine because we assumed it will be worth it. When we were finally seated the waitress was the best part of our experience. She was fast and sweet. We are all eaters and drinkers. We ordered a LOT of food. And we each had a minimum of 2 drinks each. Needless to say dinner of 6 people who want appetizers, main course and dessert will take longer than 1.5 hours. After 1.5 hours THE OWNER come over to us and says that someone is waiting for our table, we weren't done eating! I think she schedules people at 1.5 hour intervals. We proceeded to tell her we are not done and that we still want dessert. We were very annoyed at this point but pleasant. She proceeded to come TWO more times to tell us people are waiting for our table! Unbelievable. At this point we ordered dessert just out of spite. This isn't even the end of it. We were able to see the people waiting for tables and we saw THE OWNER show the people our table, as in those are the people who took your table. This was by far the worst dining experience I have ever had. We apologized to the waitress, and still left 20% tip. However, we had a very firm discussion with the owner. I do not know how this business has such good reviews. Actually, I think I do. She seemed to personally know a lot of the people dining. She was very nice to those people. OUTSIDERS beware. Oh and the food, was basically edible. No frills at all. She claims that she has dishes from all over the world, the problem is none of the dishes tasted authentic (we all took something different). She would be better off picking one cuisine and trying to...

Worth a visit!

Doesn't look like much from the outside, but walk right in and you'll be welcomed with some awesome vibrant colors with its art and decor. It was fun looking at all the different bits of randomness.

Food variety was not bad. I came here with the fam to try something new for food... but it was actually difficult to do that. Their menu on their website is pretty old; the menu now doesn't include the Australian spring lamb, the Ethiopian sirloin, the Thai red curry duck, or the Navajo pumpkin pasta... all of which I would jump at just to try. A lot of it is stuff you can get at other places: some Asian, some Mexican, some American. Go figure, a lot of the vegan-friendly stuff was more expensive than everything else.

My family is much less adventurous and got nachos and Texas burgers. One of my kids got the Brazilian roll-ups... which didn't taste/feel very exotic to me. My portabella mushroom panini (savory mushroom, balsamic, cheesy goodness, and red peppers) and the Egyptian brussel sprouts (touch of sweetness, "meatiness" of good sprouts, smokiness from flash frying, no sulfur) were good and probably the best things there... which I guess isn't saying much. The pickled carrots were basically bread-and-butter sweet but still good.

Kristy was our server and she was excellent! Very animated, took our entire order just by memory, and super friendly and accommodating!

Staff wore masks all throughout, from what I saw.

I didn't partake in drinks, but I did eyeball what looked like a Laphroaig CS or QC from afar, which is something you don't normally see. (It's usually the basic collection of a few Johnnie Walkers like the Red and Black). They have a large cocktail selection.

Despite not having the adventurous menu I was looking for, I may stop in here again and hopefully they bring back...

How the reviews are so positive here baffles my mind. My family and I had the worst experience here at any restaurant that I can remember. We were seated quickly as it was not very busy. However that is where the positives ended. We had to wait over 20 minutes to order and that wait was only that “short” because we had to flag down the waiter that kept walking by and looking at us but never stopping to take our order. He said “I can take your orders quickly before they yell at me”. I don’t know who “they” were but based on his nodding his head in the direction of outside and the couple that later came inside very upset and needing to be served by someone else, I can only assume it was that party who was also clearly ignored…and apparently more important than us since we weren’t yelling. And it became quite obvious that the waiter really wasn’t ready to take our order when, after being there for an hour, we were told he had “bad news” for us-he never put our order in. He admitted it which I suppose is a good thing, but nothing else was done to make up for it. Most establishments would offer to comp something or offer a free dessert. Don’t get me wrong, the point is not getting something for free, but the principle of making up for a mistake and bad service. However, not only did that NOT happen, we didn’t even get our drinks refilled when most glasses on the table were empty, and to add additional insult, when my daughter asked for a little more cheese for her nachos, we were charged $1.50 for, at best, a tiny smattering of shredded cheese. Maybe this was just a bad day, but unless you come here not hungry and have hours to wait, there are much better options in...