This restaurant is located in the new Phoenix project, including my hotel and plans for shopping malls. The sell the place like dream, but I think it’s more a nightmare…. (www.hotelphoenix.com)

Since I had some dinners in the new year over the past few weeks, I decided, once again, not to go out and search for a possible better restaurant, especially because of the snow, more then 1 meters of fresh snow all around me…. And since they sell this restaurant as top of the bill, who am I not tot trust them…

Coming in, the restaurant was full…

Of air…

Not a good sign. But still full of confidence, I asked the old, Lurch-like waiter to give me the menu, it took some explaining what that was, since his English was pretty bad. There were some good suggestions and possible great food on there so that made me very happy:

 

After some hard thinking I went for the Istrian Pasta with truffles, had more of a feeling for Ceasar salad or Carpaccio, but than this will become more of a Caeser Salad and Carpaccio review site, and we do not want that, do we?

Only 3 minutes after the dry bread was on the table, the Pasta was brought to me…

And it looked and mst of all smelled perfect, all my faith back restored again, ready to dive in! The first bite was half-warm, too bad. Second bite was hot as hell… so I’m guessing microwaved pasta…??? So it needed a hustle and then at least the temperature was okay. The taste was of pure Truffle oil which is good but a bit harsh at some times. The overall flavor was very sad, just discuissed by the Truffle oil. So I asked Lurch to bring me some fresh pepper, Oops, mistake. It not only took him 6 minutes (?!) I heard yelling coming from the kitchen, maybe they cook without salt and pepper here? He rushed to my table and turned the mill strongly to see fresh salt coming out on my plate….AAARRGGGHHH how to ruin a terrible dish? Like that! 3 minutes after this the pepper came, the pasta was cold, the taste horrible and the hunger was growing.

Luckily I had a main course as well, fresh Chicken fillet with goats cheese sauce and pumpkin Gnocchi, sounds good! And looked like this:

 

A fillet with a bone on it… and a sauce that was pure cheese puree…more like a cheese fondue even… And the chicken was deep fried !!! Really???!!! Is that cooking? The small stones called gnocchi were quite okay to be honest, but so heavy.

In the end I plucked some meat from the bone, ate some gnocchi with the fondue and left ¾ of my plate. Best part is, that I asked for some wine straight after me finishing the starter. I got it (the menu) together with my main course, and Lurch came back to ask my choice of wine when he cleaned my table 15 minutes later…. So I said, too late, not so thirsty now…and he said, maybe just a glass the? WTF? To go with what, the air over here. At the same time, I need to be honest, a second table with 6 people had arrived and serving 2 tables at once is very difficult. Funniest part was when that second table asked for a vegetarian dish….hahaha, you should have seen the face of the waiter, vegetarian, in Croatia? No option, you like a tomato or cucumber maybe….??

Believe it or not, after this experience I was still hungry… And needed a dessert! And since they have got special desserts with pancakes, that should be a good way to end a terrible dinner!

I ordered the special one, pancakes filled with plum jam and flambéed with plum brandy, my 6 year old son can make that, you cannot fuck this up, can you?

And they did not. It was a good homemade pancake, with good old homemade plum jam and dried plums. Happy to go to the toilet now…

So for this evening my points are:

Food: 3.5

Coziness: 2

Staff: 1

Price: 6

 

Overall score of 3.1 out of 10