L'Harmattan, Saint George, Bucurestiul d'Altadat': "No go restaurants in Bucharest" Top 5 Page for this destination Bucharest Restaurant Tip by Romanian_Bat

Living in a country like Romania gives one the chance to witness enough stupidity for a millenium by just trying to... dine out. So, we find ourselves in the city centre, trying to get something to eat at 10 PM on a summer day, and we do not want to get into the pizza, sandwich'n shawarma thing. So we go to L'Harmattan, a Moroccan restaurant. The door is wide open, there is a big board saying they are open until midnight, the waitress is stuck to the bar chatting to the bar tender. We try to enter, the waitress turns her head in disgust and shouts with that impossible to translate Romanian "sictir": "It's closed!". We wonder how that can be in a civilized tone, at which she starts mocking at us. We go on, along the same Franceza Street, to Saint George, a Hungarian Restaurant with which I had previous bad experiences (i.e. if one needs to make a group menu, he/she has to wait for 2 months until the manager returns from holidays and no, one cannot use the regular menu), but to hell, we are hungry. The restaurant is full, but we find a table. The waiter comes, his face sick and tired of yet another group of hungry fools: "Only if you want to drink something from the bar, otherwise it is closed". OK, we walk on, to one of the most narcissist places in town: the Cafeneaua Bucurestiului d'Altadat'. They had their first outlet in Brasov and now they opened this melange of English bar with a touch of French wallpaper and frozen food. Anyway, we sit down, are given the "good" piece of news that if we want to eat, we should hurry for the kitchen closes down in 15 minutes. We choose something and enjoy a glass of wine in the music provided by morons that parked their cars in the bus stop so that, every time the bus passes by, their alarm starts. Time passes by at first unnoticed, as we keep on chatting, but then it becomes painful. It's been half an hour, then more. Eventually food comes. The supposedly thick soup is as light as the French onion soup, and my Thai salad is simply disgusting, but I am too hungry to say no; the meat is hard like the wooden table I am sitting at, it is salty as if it was salt with a touch of meat and not the other way around. The humus that comes aside is tasteless, which makes it for softening somehow the enormous quantity of salt in the meat; the only relatively good thing is the aubergine salad, even though it is pretty obvious it's been frozen and microwaved. The bread they bring is the most uninspiring (and untoasted) toast junk ever, it tastes and feels like chewing gum. We get on a cab and go home. I get off the car at Dristor and remember the line of people waiting at the shawarma place in Dristor at any time of the day and night. Now I see: those people are lucky, for they are being treated more correctly than imbeciles wanting to eat in supposedly high class restaurants in Bucharest. Verdict: no l'Harmattan (if you want to be treated right and to eat well Moroccan food, try Annette in Sofia, that is a totally different place), no St. George (if you want to eat Hungarian food and be treated with respect, go to Targu Mures' Tempo Panzio, or to Tusnad's Fortuna Restaurant), and hell no Cafeneaua Bucurestiului d'Altadat' (if you want to get a glimpse of oldtimes' Bucharest, try Rossetya; if you want to eat local, try Vatra). And just for the sake of it, when trying to dine out in places you do not know, keep a sandwich in your handbag; just in case they are total frauds, as they very well might be.

Address: Around Strada Franceza, Bucharest
Comparison: N/A
Price: US$21-30
Rating: 1
Theme: Eclectic/International