...one night, actually tonight, ok, we just came back from it (and found it worth to blog about it straight away), we went to a restaurant, which tripadvisor recommended us as a must try!
The menu promised delicious food...and everything which I liked was also possible to get in one menu offer including 4 courses.
Karina chose a starter, main and desert of the "normal" menu (see plate de jour).
After a big while, we got served our glasses of wine...and despite ordering two glasses of white wine, we got served one white and one red (which was btw ice cold...why do people do this? :-) ). Changing the one glass back into white wine, we received our starters...but somehow they forgot about my ouvre bouche (my first starter). Oh well, no problem I thought...they just mixed the order of the dishes...easy.
But then, Karinas main arrived...leaving me with nothing but an empty plate...which was filled with my main dish 15min afterwards. OK, bye bye ouvre bouche.
Getting to the desert, the guys forgot about me, again, but kindly offered me half of Karinas desert. How nice is that! I insisted on my own...and felt a little challenged.
This challenge then truly emerged, when I tried to explain the waiter (meanwhile, we had roundabout 3 waiters randomly taking care of us) in my best Spanish/Portuguese mix (because English is a "dead language" here :-) ), that I don`t want to have my first starter now after having the desert, but he should apply a discount and get us the bill.
Not possible...! Karina and I smiled at him and kindly asked him to make it possible...what we got was then an invoice, with only the items which we actually had...meaning, that he calculated all dishes of the menu offer which I had separately...getting to a price which was even higher than the menu offer. Hmmm, someone didn`t quite understand the idea of a menu offer I guess :-).
Finally, the owner of the restaurant appeared and we explained him in English our issue...and then the clarification process started: he ran off our table and was shouting in Portuguese...we didn`t understand the content, but could feel the tension in the air! Then he ran back to our table...which one was it??? Which one of the waiters ("servants") did take your order...he asked very hectic. But we didn`t know, as they all had darker skin and were dressed in black and had similar looks. Also, we didn`t feel like pointing at one to blame him. "But it would really help me", the guy told and was shouting across the restaurant to get all his employees to us at the table.
The picture which we got then was absurd! The "white master" ordering his 3 "darkskinned servants" to our table, the guys were standing there heads down, and we were asked to point out the one which took our initial order (and apparently did the mistake; I guess that was the thinking). Honestly, we were quite embarrassed and somehow felt drawn back into colonial times.
And don`t get us wrong...this post does`t have any racist intention, but what we experienced was just so absurd and shameful, especially if you consider the history of the city.
End of the story was that one guy took over the responsibility, everyone rushed off, and the "white master" told us he is "sorry for the kids".
And we didn`t have to pay for the drinks.
And we arrived safely at the hotel without getting beaten up by the angry waiters.
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