I hadn’t eaten out for
ages so when I heard about this new fusion food restaurant that had just opened
its doors, I immediately booked a table for the next Saturday night.
The settings were
inspiring: sleek, modern furniture, beautifully designed space, intimate and
yet buzzing atmosphere. It was very impressive!
The waitress directed
us to our table and brought us the wine list and dinner menu. How inspiring! I
was completely seduced by the mix of inspirations, Asian, diverse European,
everything sounded refined and delicious.
We decided to both try
and share the crispy salt and pepper squid and the lamb sheek kebabs. While we
were waiting, we ordered a nice bottle of crisp Chardonnay from South Africa. We were both nicely surprised at how affordable the wine selection was compared to the
restaurant posh style and the food prices. After a 45 minutes wait, we were
both starving and quite frustrated. The service was rather appalling; the
waitress presented us with the wrong bottle of wine twice, another one kept
bringing us dishes that we hadn’t ordered and were clearly meant to somebody
else…it was not a great start to our evening.
When the starters
finally arrived we were a bit shocked at the size of Damien’s: three tiny sad
looking sausage shaped pieces of lamb mince. It didn’t taste bad but it just
felt a bit bland and uninteresting.
As for my crispy squids, they were nice,
delicately coated in a light golden batter but again they lacked this little
kick that I would have definitely expected from fusion cooking because of all
the spices and flavours that usually characterise it.
One hour later, within
which we had been entertained by the multiple complaints from customers on
their way out, a waiter served us two supposedly “brioche bap” onion ring
burgers. I had chosen the bacon and cheese option and Damien the goat cheese
and red onion jam one. What we were actually served were two greasy beef
patties sandwiched in between two small pieces of industrial chewy Panini bread that
didn’t even covered the meat. When we asked what had happened to the brioche
baps, we were told that they simply ran out of it and asked if it was ok. Well,
it would have been nice to know beforehand as there was no way we were going
to wait another hour to get something else. The skinny French fries were the
only successful part of the dish, beautifully crunchy; but the fake burger was
horrendous. The meat tasted as greasy as it looked and was definitely really
low quality. The cheese was burnt and the bacon very scarce. Damien’s goat
cheese was not very good either and the red onion jam was clearly bought from a
shop.
Picking at our main
courses didn’t satisfy our appetites and we decided to order a chocolate
fondant for both of us. Well, dessert didn’t go down a treat. The cake that we
thought we would share was ridiculously tiny. I am really not kidding, it was
the size of a golf ball and we barely got two spoons out of it. It was served
with a scoop of ice-cream that must have been melted and frozen again many
times, crunched under the tooth and tasted rank.
That was honestly the
worst restaurant experience I ever had and if it weren’t for the Treat Ticket
Discount we used to pay, I would have expected a refund. They did apologise
profusely when we left but all they had to say for their defence was that they
had only been open 6 weeks. I personally believe that it is when you open that
you do have to provide the best service and food ever because the first
impressions about your restaurant and the word of mouth determine your
reputation and your name. So, as you could guess, Maze won’t make it to my list
of top 10 favourites restaurants in Belfast but hopefully the next culinary
experience I share with you will make it up for this one!
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