I am not normally prone to writing bad reviews. But I must say: certainly do not come here for the food, the price or the service. Location is the only thing this place has going for it. The proximity to Liseberg is the only explanation (not excuse!) for a restaurant to charge this much and be this underwhelming. To get to the restaurant, you first have to traverse a lobby that reeks of perfumed air. It must be a headache for anyone scent-sensitive, but also gives the impression that the place is scent-masked, not necessarily clean. Weird for such a brand new place. Then, in a nearly empty restaurant, apart from two bartenders working the bar, we had a lengthy wait with two hungry kids before the table server (who was working the bar, which had only 2 guests) even appeared to notice us waiting in plain sight by the maître-d' counter to be seated at our reserved time. The menu was limited to a disappointingly narrow range of zero-creativity, euro-template dishes (hamburger, caesar salad, charcuterie board, steak frites, vanilla ice cream). The price point of the house wine, beer and (even the non-alcoholic!) sparkling wine was high enough to make me opt for sticking to water (because I don't feel like indulging when the food is this uninspired). The kids' menus actually seemed to offer more variation, and are meant to serve as colouring pages to give them something to do while waiting for the food (hey, kudos for the idea). The server offered the kids at our table coloured pencils, but immediately forgot about it for about 15 minutes, so these resourceful kids were close to using the cutlery to connect-the-dots and solve a maze, until they spied some pencils on a nearby abandoned table (that had not been re-set after previous guests; again, in a nearly empty restaurant). Almost all the pencils were unsharpened and worn down to the wood and therefore useless, which makes bored kids frustrated. The food looked pretty, but was not worth the price. The chicken in the caesar salad was cooked dry and the cheese on the charcuterie board was so newly taken out of the fridge that it was cold on the tongue and tasted very little, almost like plastic. The cured meat was also dryer than I'd expect from the grocery store. Without mentioning it either in the menu or upfront, the restaurant offered and then charged 45 sek for two bottles of water that were obviously carbonated on the premises (the branded bottles imply so). That's just exploitative in a country that has some of the best tap water in the world. The only forgiving factor is that the kids both found the "crispy fish and chips" to be crispy as advertised, but as they said, "we've eaten better". Our server seemed genuinely unaware that we were annoyed by the wait, the forgetting, the "pencils" and the food quality, but because we are Swedes, we expressed our disappointment with "everything's rather OK". Strawberry, get your damn restaurant act together. It says Quality on the building. I will be recommending to your hotel guests to do what I saw a lady in the lobby doing as I exited - bringing up takeout pizza boxes from one of the nearby restaurants to her room. I am certain that her experience was way more satisfying and better value for money.
Rapportera
