2 Ivy Leung - 2 years ago
We really enjoyed the food. But we expected much better dining experience given this is a fine dining restaurant and the a 1-Michelin-star rating.
1. First when we checked in downstairs at the bar, we were greeted by a host on the ground floor who took our coats. He then told us to take the elevator and told us which floor we were going. We stepped out of the elevator (white room) and into this very narrow hallway with two doors on either side. No one was there to greet us or guide us to the table. We were not sure if we were supposed to wait or be greeted by our server. We stood there for 2 minutes and decided to try our luck — we opened one door and realized it was the kitchen which we were promptly told to go to the other side. So we went to the other door which looked like was a dining room and we basically SAT ourselves at a table that we GUESSED was meant for us (there was only a table set for 4 people). We felt super awkward to having to seat ourselves...were we supposed to wait in the hallway or were we supposed to just seat ourselves? This is a fine dining restaurant, surely someone should come and acknowledge us? At the very least tell us where to go? If we had waited we would’ve probably needed to stand there for 5 minutes because it took another 5-8 minutes of us sitting at the table before we were greeted by our server. I certainly did not expect this at a fine dining restaurant. When the server finally arrived, she seemed hurried and disorganized.
2. The seating arrangement was strange - two of us faced the painting while the other two were facing each other on the long end. I did not understand why we could not have been placed on the other side as clearly there was room (even from your Google photos, you had a table for 4 on the left side of the dining room) It made conversations very hard and it was too dark to admire the food or take any sort of decent photos. Two of us were awkwardly staring at the painting by course 5 in between conversations. I did not feel the restaurant considered the guests when deciding on this seating plan. Or worse, it almost felt as if it was intentional to seat us away from the other tables because it’s highly unusual for a restaurant to purposely place two tables along one side of the wall for a party of 4. Have you ever seen a restaurant, let along a fine dining one at that, to offer this arrangement?
3. It was a bit stuffy/hot in the white room — apparently they misplaced the remote and so it was another 20 minutes before they were able to have some ventilation in the room. I felt if we were in the black room it would’ve been a much nicer dining experience.
4. The time between each course was super inconsistent. We waited at least 15-20 minutes from course 3-4 — felt the last couple of courses was quite rushed seeing it was almost 10pm.
The creativity and skills behind the food was unquestionable. But if I were to rate the overall dining experience as a whole given the price/value and star-rating, I could not say this was a great experience or worth the value. At the very least, we should be greeted and made to feel welcome and unfortunately we did not feel that. And for 90Euros/pax this was certainly not what I was expecting.
