Restaurant Europea: the most awful dining experience ever. Don’t go there.

This restaurant is an absolute rip-off. We went there for New Year's Eve 2009 to celebrate and enjoy a nice evening, and eat what we thought would be refined food.

We opted for the ten course “menu degustation” dinner with champagne. The evening began really nicely. We were so impressed by the first few appetizers. Although the first two courses really amounted to two tiny bites, the chef seemed to know what he was doing, or so we thought. Then, when we began to trust that this dinner was going to be spectacular, everything changed so dramatically that we were speechless.

Halfway through the dinner, the waiters began to show an attitude, the service became ridiculously slow, and the teaser to the main course was the worst thing we had ever tasted, and every table around us was sending it back: a spiced wine that was so saturated with spices and cinnamon that it was grainy and powdery.

One bite of the main course told me that this was so awful, I was sure another bite would make me sick. My husband, who by then had waited two and a half hours for the main course, and who had been snacking on bread in between the one bite sized appetizers, was so incredibly hungry that he ate the deep-fried tempura-style tuna steak with a strange, oil-soaked crust, and the so-very-obviously-days-old-dried-up-hummus. The tuna was drenched in cold vegetable oil because they did not care to wait for the frying oil to warm up. Absolutely terrible. With every bite my husband would say: “this is awful and dry but I’m so hungry, I’m gonna eat it. I think the mop boy cooked this one.”

The cheese plate was ridiculously salty and not worth eating. The “frozen souffle” was just ice cream. Then, we waited and waited for the desert, until finally, exasperated at the slow service, I pointed out to the waitress that we were still waiting for the last item on the list to arrive. To my surprise, she just said “Oh, that’s the gift bag they give you on the way out.” Then another twenty minutes passed by, and a tray of tiny bite sweets came to the table with an “et voila!” arrogantly said. Well they tasted quite awful, and we realized then why these trays were returning full from all the tables around us.

It was almost midnight and the waiters had taken away the balloons from the tables. There was no happy new year from the staff, no smiles. They were just waiting for the last few tables to clear.

We were freezing cold, the restaurant was depending on a few small electric heaters placed under your feet to counteract the front door that would periodically blow freezing cold air through the entire restaurant. We really couldn’t wait to leave, but the ridiculously slow service dragged this dinner out for four and a half hours.

We were stunned that an evening that started so well could end up so badly. We were incredibly disappointed.

We went home and the disaster began to really be felt. My idiot husband was in and out of the bathroom all night with an awful diahria, and he was sick for the next three days. He had eaten what I tried to warn him not to eat. I felt so bad for him.

Well, would you believe it? When we contacted the restaurant about this serious case of food poisoning, the general manager was so rude, could not care less, and said “a refund is out of the question. Thank you for calling!” After spending $390 on a dinner for two, we were treated in the most terrible way.

Restaurant Europea: the most awful dining experience ever. Don’t go there.