I just came back from a dinner from Zahrada v Opere. Let me first mention that I don%26#39;t mind spending money on a good meal in a nice restaurant with great service. But this evening was frustrating from beginning to end. First of all, the hotel concierge did not give us good directions. We knew it was near the Opera but couldn%26#39;t find it. Then we asked a police man and he had not heard of the restaurant nor the street it was located on (turned out later we were half a block away) and we asked some people at a Chinese restaurant and they, too, had never heard of the restaurant. We finally hailed a taxi and he took us for a 2-minute ride (maybe not even that long) to the restaurant.
After we were seated and given menus, we wanted to order wine with dinner. We selected an Argentinean Malbec -- no vintages were shown on the menu -- and the waitress brought a bottle that was way too young to drink. We asked for the sommelier and she said they did not have one!! Given the prices at the restaurant and its vaunted reputation, we were flabbergasted. By the way, the wine list was VERY disappointing.
After a passable meal, we asked the waiter to call us a taxi and he explained that he could not because there would be no place (driveway) for the taxi to pull into to pick us up!! He suggested that we get out on the street to wave down a taxi. If you%26#39;ve ever been in the area of this restaurant, you know that there are major highways around the building so it was impossible to simply stand outside the restaurant and flag down a taxi. All in all, we had much better meals elsewhere for a whole lot less money than we spent at Zahrada v Opere.
Don%26#39;t bother spending your time or money in this restaurant. It is difficult to find, the food is mediocre, and the service is not at all exceptional. What a waste!
|||
It is hard to find, but that is not all their fault. They got involuntarily stuck behind security barriers near the top of Wenceslas Square a few years ago.
The prices in dollar terms are high, but it is not even close to top Prague prices. Not so many places in this price range have a sommelier. I%26#39;ve had some good meals there (though the last time was not the best one).
I%26#39;ll keep my ears open for other negative comments, but for now, I%26#39;d still recommend it for a pre-opera meal.
|||
there is a fair place taxi stand around the corner at the train station...
|||
Also one on Wenceslas Square, I believe. But the restaurant should know that and be able to pass such information to customers.
I worked at a big restaurant in London many years ago and as part of the job, we had to be able to give directions to the areas theaters, tube stops, etc.
|||
Maybe, just maybe your expectation was too high for what the restaurant was ? I wouldn%26#39;t expect a restaurant whose menu has no wine vintage to have a sommelier. Perhapas an accumulation of unlucky incidents ?
|||
I agree with both Brewsta and kat1. The dinner was probably a convergence of bad breaks and high unmet expectations. Beginning with a concierge that didn%26#39;t really know where the restaurant was located, to streets with no signs, to 4 people who were standing within half a block of the restaurant who didn%26#39;t recognize the name of the restaurant/street, to physical barricades which made getting into/out of the restaurant difficult, to a waitress who insisted on seating us in a dark corner when there were plenty of well-lit tables around that were unoccupied (we finally prevailed) + all the details I mentioned in my previous posting,
Oh well, that%26#39;s part of the experience of travelling. Like anyone else who has traveled extensively, I find that the good always outweighs the bad. And I would NEVER give up traveling just because of a few experiences like this one.
|||
-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-
This topic was inactive for 6 months and has been closed to new posts. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.
To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html
We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.
Removed on: 8:18 am, September 26, 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment