ZentRuhm

pretty nice tapas concept pretty bad execution if you come here slightly hungry you need 4-5 dishes (depending whether you include a main) per person - which cost 15-25 euros each. meaning if you drink something, you easily end up with 100 euros per person. some of their food is pretty good (e.g. the prawn popcorn & the truffle pimientos) but not that good. so does that feel happy when eating tapas-style - it certainly does not. location is pretty cool.

Honestly flummoxed by all the sensational reviews. We have trusted these and then doubted ourselves or just the day we went first. So yes, we were there twice. Once for a set menu for the Restaurantwoche. And afterwards we decided to give them another chance for the „High End Free Flow Brunch“ with all you can eat and drink from 11am - 3pm (this will be relevant later 😊) Our first visit was a catastrophe that we have tried to see light and funny. The service was atrocious - the accompanying wines weren’t told properly- sometimes wrong even, they straight up forgot about us once, when arriving you have to nearly force them to talk to you because otherwise they will just ignore you. The food was overly sour, the desserts seemed straight from the freezer/metro. The ambience was more of a train hall vibe… The taste was not great … but you know. Maybe it was just a bad day. Now to the absolutely ludicrous part. We booked the high end brunch because we thought the added on tapas, sushi, mains and so on still sounded interesting, the time was fine and the free flow package might still make it worth our while at the very least. Funnily enough we said beforehand - you know they have eggs Benedict there … how badly can you screw up Eggs Benedict for real. Oh boy… To frame this again: this brunch was sold to us as going from 11am - 3pm. With all you can eat and drink during this timeframe. Since in the menu there were started and mains and so on we specifically asked as the waiter explained the menu to us if we should order first only starters and move our way to the mains and desserts. We got told that it doesn’t matter because .. and I quote „you can always order everything“ - which is what was advertised as well. Well … seems like that was not such a thing later on. We started ordering from top to bottom, slowly - 2 plates at a time to savor it and not have things get cold. To be honest, highlight was for both meals the bought Öfferl Bread in a sharing loaf with the Miso Butter. Other good standouts to be specific included the Vitello Forello and the crispy rice with salmon (mostly the crispy rice). That’s about it, remember the Eggs Benedict? I have never in my life eaten such a bad version of it… if we take away taste alone - the bread was too dominant, the hollandaise was dryish and not really part of it, it was all dry- we still have the fact that the egg was hard.. a poached egg - the egg yolk and white was both hard and dry, what even is this? Onwards though: Once we got to the warm starters (at around 1pm) we were told we can only order main dishes anymore and no more starters, tapas, sushi. Why? Dunno.. run out? Already ordered by other tables too much and run it of pre-prepped stuff? Anyways, so we went for the mains, maybe luckily skipping the warm starters like escargots ( which I was apprehensive about after the egg disaster) The mains were just ok. Too sour, nothing standout, just like in our first meal. Just like most of the cold starters we had before. And then when we wanted to order the last 2 mains that were missing from our set.. we got told that only dessert could be ordered anymore .. see the pattern here? Btw: the timing was: 1pm end of starters/tapas (roughly one and a bit pages of the 2 available) 1.30pm - end of mains Ok. We wanted to at least try all the desserts single and not the mini variation. We got to 2 slices of cheesecake until we got told that’s it as well, but we were allowed to get the variation once, yay. Same as the set menu. At 2pm we also got told that the drink free flow was over and that we now had time for enjoyment. (Geh was mach ich während Genusszeit? Verdauen?) During this time, in which a few other tables were also rather confused and not very happy, towards the end we were allowed one more free drink each. That must make us grateful now or something. Before we wanted to try DiningRuhm as well because we cannot comprehend how this thing even exists and how it can have 2 Hauben- but no. Not leaving another cent there.

We were really dissapointed with the whole experience at ZentRuhm, actually even 2 times in a roll to be specific. All started with our first impression at visit 1 were we booked a course dinner: When entering, there seemed to be something like a welcome desk in the hallway - which was unattended at the moment. After a short wait we moved on inside to the bar in the room to the right where the staff greeted us from their cash desk but did not seem to move towards us or take our reservation. So we approached them to finally get a table assigned. That was not only confusing but also not very welcoming. But OK, we thought we might have caught a bad moment of stress or something like that - happens. But while the food was very often on the really sour side, the service felt very clumsy and left there without any proper training (not their fault!!), especially when explaining the ordered wine accompaniment there were some really bad moments of embarrassment (either descriptions were forgotten or the wrong wine was explained e.g.) Also the way the staff was serving and talking had more the vibe of a local suburb night café. (Again, not their fault, just lack of training!) The one dish I found good was the pork belly only I tried. Though we wanted to give them another chance, the big disappointment came on the second visit, which was a brunch option. We entered seeing the same confusion in the eyes of customers waiting at the suspected welcome desk with even staff passing by and greeting them but still walking on and disappearing to the bar?!? But this time, while the second dining room was way nicer than on the first visit, we were not only disappointed by the food & service, but more importantly the sneaky way a free flow brunch was sold. If an offer says „High class brunch with free flow drinks from 11:00 to 15:00“ I would not assume, that mainly half of the menu card like starters and egg dishes are not possible to order after 13:00 and to continue this strange behaviour the last orders for the whole card (all main dishes) except dessert was announced half an hour later at 13:30. This all happened although we specifically asked the waiter if we should order dishes in the menu order which was answered with: „no, you can order any dish on the menu at any time and in any order“ On top of all that we also were informed that we could only order the dessert variation anymore and not each single dessert shortly after that last order for main dishes. And if that was not enough, it was further not possible to order drinks anymore after 14:00 - AN HOUR before end of the advertised brunch time. On asking why these limitations were not included in the description of the offer, we were told that this is the „enjoyment phase“ - I really never heard that before?!? Because alot of other tables seemed to also complain about this we were offered a single last drink included in the brunch - how accommodating! It was a complete disaster and we will never come back to spend a single cent there for sure. If there is one thing that I could remember as being good food it would be the Vitello Forello. (And again pork belly) Even the Öfferl bread with Miso butter that was very warm & delicious at first was served cold and dry at the end. (Reminder: 13:30)

We attended a company event here. The creations were interesting, and the tapas were a unique experience. However, the gluten-free handling was very poor. Despite assuring us they could accommodate celiac disease, they served only a single piece of gluten-free bread as the opener. They also mixed up plates and gave someone else’s dish to our celiac guest, then took it back and served it to the original guest even after ours had eaten from it. In the end, our guest had nothing but water and a piece of bread for nearly three hours.

Nice ambience, friendly service and good food.