bad restaurant alert: munich
 

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Author: subcon
Date: 04/14/2007, 05:03 pm

in close to five years and 350+ postings, i've never made a negative comment on a given establishment. here is the first (and i do it more to inform than to whine):

the weinhaus schneider on sparkassenstrasse is unquestionably the worst dining experience i've had in 35 years of european travel. mark me that it's not the food but, rather, the overall lack of ambiance or courtesy on the part of the owner and staff that sink it.

to begin, it's april 8 (easter sunday), a very slow day for restaurants in germany. we enter at approx 8:30. a four top is the only table available and we (a couple)are immediately informed that we must move should a foursome arrive. where to we can only surmise but having some experience in the food and beverage industry, i can understand this. actually, a two top becomes available and i offer to move. but no, alle ist in ordnung.

they tout themselves as a fondu specialist, so we order fondu with vegatables. now i don't know what fondu means to you, but to me, it's intrinsically linked with cheese.

what we end up with is a pot of boiling water, a boullian cube, some raw vegetables and a wire basket in which to cook them.

if i had wanted to go camping, i'd not be prepared to pay so much for it. be that as it may, the server (the only other staff) looked upon us as mystified as we were with this offering. i made the obvious mistake of suggesting that this was not what we had ordered.

well, all hell broke loose: the owner, a female in her late 40's, charged the table insisting that this is what we had ordered (from her) and we WOULD pay for it. she was so far into my face that i could count her nose hairs. i mean this was pre-reaction to the max. after i embarrassed her into calming down, we negotiated (so i thought) a fair resolution.

i agreed that we would pay for the veggies and she would bring on the cheese (as originally ordered!!!). i had to ask for the bread cubes to dip into the cheese (and they sucked...yesterday's unused).

let me go further: when she asked if we wanted water, i told her tap water was fine and her response was that she couldn't make money off of it. i mean, straight out like that!

let's talk about the background music which was one continous loop of one song (mit yodels) over and over. apparently, the cost of a full cd was too much.

well, now to rechsnung (the check): this person charged us 7.5e a piece for a martini and rossi short coctail. an entire bottle of m&r is 6.25e. we saw them laughing about it after they gave us the check.

we ended up spending 98e on a miserable meal. but the internet gives us the last laugh...avoid this place like the plague!!!

You shouldn't have gone there in the first place. It's not difficult to get that information here, ask first and you won't be sorry later. Around Marienplatz you need to be extremly careful with your choice of restaurants. You learned and won't make that mistake again :D

Unfortunately, there are many kinds of fondue -- one is cheese, and another is Chinese or beef, which is cooked in boiling water. Looks like you got the beef kind modified for vegetarians.

I know that my Swiss hotel once advertised fondue night for dinner, and I was mightily disappointed to find it was, yes, beef fondue. In Switzerland!!

s

hi, subcon,

I suspect a real culture/language barrier here, plus very poor service combined to ruin your night.

for starters, fondue is not necesarily cheese - as an awful lot of uk cupboards can tesify. There was a fashion here for the type where you have a pot full of OIL boiling over a burner. in it you cook meat, [beef steak usually] veggies like courgette [zuccini to you] mushroom, cauliflower, etc. Millions were sold as wedding presents, only to languish in unseen corners.

Then there is the sort you encountered, which i believe originates in asia. you can drink the resulting soup once you've eaten the veggies.

but of course this should be clear from the menu, which obviously it wasn't. and once they realised the mistake, the restaurant should have bent over backwards to provide something you'd like.

hope the rest of your trip was more satisfactory!

regards, ann

<<<<<
Millions were sold as wedding presents, only to languish in unseen corners.
>>>>>>

many fine examples can be found today in britain's charity shops. as the said wedding present recipients are starting to die off the apparatus is released from the unseen corners and into the charity shops.

hi, walkinground,

some of us are still breathing!

regards, ann

Ordering food in another country can be very tricky. I spent a month in southern Germany and three times ordered meatloaf. The first time it was the best I'd ever had but they wouldn't give me the recipe. Later, I ordered meatloaf in another town and got a huge slice of what I'd describe as Spam! We laughed heartedly over that. Then I did it again in Munich and got Spam!! Would be nice to see a sample of what you will get :-) Had I paid anything near what you paid I would have cried. This was 1996 and the meal was probably around $10.

As to fondue, it certainly should have been specified. And, I think you should send your post to the restaurant. Luckily I never ran into rude service; on the contrary, every server was helpful.

Then to the fondue pots: I occasionally use mine for a small dinner party (4-6 people). Fill the pot with butter and peanut oil to cook filet mignon and perhaps shrimp along with several dipping sauces. It's always a hit and a very congenial way to dine. Only need side dishes that won't get cold quickly.

I've ordered meals in other countries and still laugh at what I got. Luckily nothing tasted bad but certainly not what I expected. Oh, well, the experience of travel.

First mistake:

"now i don't know what fondu means to you, but to me, it's intrinsically linked with cheese."

Second Mistake:

"i made the obvious mistake of suggesting that this was not what we had ordered."

Third Mistake:

Not cutting your losses and leaving right then and there.

Fourth Mistake (which I am glad you didn't make):

Thinking that getting a recommendation from some anonymous poster about a restaurant anywhere is sure-fire and fool-proof.

Chalk it up to experience and, hopefully, someday you'll be able to look back and laugh about it.

subcon,

adding to Dukey's list:

5th mistake: thinking that a restaurant with menus in 10 languages (as they claim on a Munich tourist web site) is not a tourist trap. ;-)

We live and learn....

Happier travels!

Phil.

Sorry you didn't understand the concept of various types of fondue. What you got is an acceptable one. You really can't blame them because you assumed that "vegetable fondue" would include cheese.

This is not unlike seeing "spaghetti" followed by other words on an Italian menu and then being upset because it wasn't topped with tomato sauce the way you're used to it. Or ordering a Latte in Italy and yelling because it's only milk and there's no coffee at all -- like it would have at Starbucks.

Eating in a foreign country, you cannot expect your expectations of certain foods to be right.

I'm sorry this was such a problem and I'm not going to defend the restaurant as I wasn't there, but I really am trying to picture why the woman would become so "in your face" and "all hell breaking loose" and insisting you were going to pay for it unless you had already suggested that you weren't paying for it. Frankly it really was NOT their fault that you ordered something you didn't understand. That's still the bottom line of the problem, but I realize it all went downhill from there.

I think subcon made a "reasonable" assumption about the "fondue" he ordered.

I didn't find out until last year that there are several types of fondue in Swiss culture, and one of them is Chinese Fondue - which is the one that subcon got.

subcon - I'm sorry this happened to you. I do agree that the service and attitude you received was unacceptable. Thanks for posting.

I have no idea if the lady was out of line or not.

But before you post something smug like &quot;<i>but the internet gives us the last laugh..</i>&quot; you should make darn sure you are on firm footing. <b>Of course</b> there are types of fondue other than cheese. And if you ordered the &quot;wrong&quot; type and then indicated you would not pay - just maybe she was totally justified to go off on you . . . .

&gt;they tout themselves as a fondu specialist
Welll, I can understand the reaction, ordering what they call &quot;fondue&quot; and not real local food. You made experiments with exotic foods. Why don't you do look where the locals go and try their food. Fondue of any kind surely isn't part of the Bavarian diet. If you're progressive, get a D&ouml;ner Kebap, if you're traditional, sausages and Schnitzel will do. And if you're wise, you don't frequent any of the restaurants around Marienplatz.

&quot;well, now to rechsnung (the check): this person charged us 7.5e a piece for a martini and rossi short coctail. an entire bottle of m&amp;r is 6.25e. we saw them laughing about it after they gave us the check.&quot;

Have you ever been to a restaurant anywhere in the world before? Have you ever ordered a cocktail anywhere? A Martini and Rossi cocktail for 7.5 euro is NOT outrageous. In fact it's cheap by many standards. If you buy a $10 glass of house wine in a nice restaurant in the US, you will find out that the entire bottle in a store probably sells for about $7.99. But what does that have to do with anything?

You think they were laughing BECAUSE they charged you that for the drink? I suspect you misjudged completely what they were laughing at.

yk, it's nice that someone is taking the side of the poster, but why on earth do you say that it was a reasonable assumption to think that a vegetable fondue would have cheese to dunk in? It doesn't! Pure and simple.

By the way, google &quot;vegetable fondue&quot;. You will find dozens of variations and recipes. Most are for cooking vegetables in oil or in broth. One involves making a dipping sauce of pureed vegetables to dip meats into. But I could not find a single version of vegetable fondue that includes cheese at all.

As someone who is not a foodie, doesn't venture into &quot;exotic foods&quot; or &quot;fancy cuisine&quot; and who has never eaten or seen fondue before, I always thought &quot;fondue&quot; was, in reality, the act of using sticks to dip foods into a bowl of something being warmed by a flame. The &quot;something&quot; could be cheese, chocolate, or some other sauce or cream. The dippees (for lack of another term) could be bread, fruits, veggies, meats, etc.

I wouldn't have assumed that ordering fondue in another country would be anything like what I knew here. Heck, even if it was cheese, it would likely have been a completely different taste than a cheese fondue back home.

I can't believe you've traveled in Europe for over 35 years. The place sounds like a huge tourist trap. They're all over Europe and easy to spot. Get over it, already. The only people getting &quot;the last laugh&quot; here are those reading your postl

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;
and not real local food. You made experiments with exotic foods. Why don't you do look where the locals go and try their food. Fondue of any kind surely isn't part of the Bavarian diet. If you're progressive, get a D&ouml;ner Kebap, if you're traditional, sausages and Schnitzel will do.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

when i worked in munich, my local colleagues ate very little traditional sausages and schnitzel. but for the first few months, they would take us to places serving things like that...until finally we told them to just take us to places where they would actually eat if they were not entertaining foreigners (ie where they normally would go for lunch). after that point we invariably ended up in italian restaurants, chinese, thai, vietnamese, etc...even mexican. we did have the occasional 'bavarian food' but quite rarely. never a doner kebab takeaway shop as most are complete rubbish (as they are here at home) and are usually only consumed when too drunk to find proper food.

since munich is quite a cosmopolitan city, the food that locals eat extends far beyond schnitzel and rubbish doner. i'm not suggesting that the OP's restaurant is somewhere locals would go (i have no idea about this place and it does sound like rubbish) but to advise tourists to each schnitzel and doner kebabs in order to 'eat like the locals' is pretty strange.

You havn't got the slightest idea, sorry! I bet you were working at O2 ;-), that's the only place they would accept &quot;foreign consultants&quot; and speak English. Fondue, surely isn't on the list of what anybody would eat, unless forced to :D

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;
that's the only place they would accept &quot;foreign consultants&quot; and speak English.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

in fact, it was an initiative for a very large german bank. the working language of the project was english (not sure why you are on about that). the consultants and bank staff were from many european countries including france, czech, croatia, switzerland and our team from the uk. many of bank staff members on the project did not speak german either...they were from eastern europe and the bank's investment division in london.

you have a strange and insular view of your city. companies like bmw and siemens would die if they didn't use english as a working language for international projects. strange that you think such companies don't use english. btw, i have also did some shorter term work with munich re and allianz...all in english.

most of the germans that i know who have advanced business degrees were taught in english. do they even have any german language MBA programmes in germany any more? i'm sure they do but they don't seem very popular.

your munich may be a city of schnitzel eating oom-pahs who only speak german...but that's not the munich that i know.

Well, yet no clue at all. :-) Have a nice day.

okay, thanks for the responses. now let me see if i can set some misconceptions straight...

first, i'm well aware that the marienplatz area is loaded with tourist traps. it also has several excellent eateries such as pfistermuhl and the alter hof. and yes, neopatrick, i have eaten in a multitude of restaurants and been a part owner of one. so i do understand the economics of drink pricing. standard price for this drink throughout germany is between 3.5 and 4.85e. but thanks for the sarcasm.

that said, i also know how to read a menu (in several languages). what we were served was listed on their menu as gemuseteller (swiss vegetable plate) not the kase fondu which i had in fact ordered. there can hardly be a confusion between the two items.

my concern was not with the error itself but, rather, how it was handled or, to my mind, mishandled by the owner. she was positively apoplectic over a plate of veggies which i would have removed and replaced with whatever the customer wanted regardless of who was &quot;in the right&quot;. but, hey, that's me.

as to the definition of fondu, i certainly stand corrected in assuming a necessary link with cheese. i don't think i'm alone in this misconception and shall make it my life's program to educate one and all for the balance of my few remaining years. but i still maintain that gemuseteller is NOT kase fondu.

my intent for posting the original was to hopefully steer the unsuspecting away from what i am sure is an ongoing miserable dining experience given the attitude of the owner and &quot;staff&quot; of this establishment.

Let me try to understand. You paid 85&euro; for two &quot;Gem&uuml;seteller&quot; there, no beef? They must have listed their prices in the menue. :-)

no...

we had the two overpriced coctails, a bottle of wine, a soup (which was actually quite good), the gemuseteller (which we didn't order but were charged for) and the kase fondu (which we originally ordered).

does that help to clear it up for you?

Yep, one Gem&uuml;seteller (not ordered) and one K&auml;sefondue (odered). A K&auml;sefondue (cheese fondu) without cheese clearly doesn't exist anywhere on the plant :-).
Expensive stuff!!! :-). What made you order wine there, as there isn't the slightest chance of getting any decent quality for a resonable amount of money.

subcon: This sounds like a miserable experience made worse by rude service. I appreciate the warning and will make sure to stay away from this place, as that seems to be your intent in warning us.
I don't think you deserve the abuse that has been hurled at you in response to your original post. You had a bad experience and you kindly warned us so that we would not have a bad experience as well. That is part of what this forum is all about.
By the way, I have had plenty of good meals in high traffic tourist areas in many cities around the world. I had some of the best pizza I have ever had in a little place in the main area on Verona, I just wish I could remember the name of the place so I could repeat the experience. I don't fault you for eating in a tourist area and I don't fault you for getting a bad meal. We have all had bad meals when travelling and most of us just get on with it. Your experience is truely rude service, which is unforgivable no matter where the restaurant is located.

OK, what's going on here?

In the original post you clearly said, &quot;they tout themselves as a fondu specialist, so we order FONDU WITH VEGETABLES. now i don't know what fondu means to you, but to me, it's intrinsically linked with cheese.&quot; Your saying &quot;i don't know what fondu means to you, but to me, it's intrinsically linked with cheese&quot; wouldn't have made any sense and you never would have said that if you did in fact order &quot;kase fondue&quot; from the menu. Of course it is cheese when it says so, but you never originally indicated that you ordered kase fondue.

Now your story TOTALLY CHANGES. You say you ordered kase fondu with vegetables. HUH? If so, why on earth wouldn't you have said that in the original post and saved us all explaining to you what vegetable fondue is?

If you're going to tell a story and report it totally inaccurrately then you can be sure people will comment on it the way you told it. Correcting your story later is fine -- but please realize your new story is NOTHING like your original post. It seems you now realize that lots of people know that vegetable fondue does not have cheese, so you've changed your story to say that you specifically ordered cheese fondue, when before you made it clear that you ordered vegetable fondue and ASSUMED it was &quot;intrinsically linked with cheese&quot;. Meanwhile it is even harder to imagine that the &quot;swiss vegetable plate&quot; that you claim is what they brought you would actually come with a fondue pot of broth and forks. Your whole story makes even less sense now than it did in your first go round.

And as to receiving &quot;abuse&quot; here, I think it should be understood by any poster that if you file a complaint and proceed to show that you were in the WRONG that people will point that out. It's a fact of life of message boards.

jdraper, if you reported that you were totally ripped off at a petrol station in France because the sign listed 1.30 euro and you filled up assuming that was per gallon, but it couldn't have been because your little car took 45 of those units -- don't you think people would point out that YOU WERE WRONG -- not them? Particularly if you blamed the station for not making it clear it was liters, not gallons that they were selling? And changing your story later to say, &quot;oh no -- the sign clearly said gallons, that's what we were buying&quot; probably won't get you off the hook. That is what is happening here.

Subcon, I realize that drink prices vary, and it's nice that you do too. So you think that there are no other restaurants in Germany that would charge 7.5 for a cocktail of Martini and Rossi? Telling us how much the bottle cost them is just plain silly.
Next you'll be ranting and raving about how airplanes charge you $5 for a little bottle of liquor that only costs them 90cents -- oh wait a minute, you already did that!

I always appreciate warnings of bad experiences. And I'm glad to be warned of the rudeness of this place. But to paint yourself as some sort of victim because you clearly didn't order what you thought you were ordering is NOT a problem with the restaurant. Period.
If you consider my comments sarcasm, so be it. I consider them logical and to the point; I'm sorry if they hurt or embarrass you because they strike too close to home.

listen...

i ordered a cheese fondue with vegetables and got a gemuseteller which was a plate of assorted vegetables replete with a pot of boiling water and assorted sauces.

i am most emphatically not changing my story any more than i ordered the gemuseteller by accident.

in any event, i've tried to make clear that my problem is not with the error but how it was handled. this was truly one time you had to be there.

and yes, if i ordered the martini and rossi at tantris or am marstall, i would expect to pay more than at a local cafe. but this place was no tantris.

as far as hurting my feelings, get over yourself.

No, problem if that's what you ordered, but if you go back and read your original post you'll see why several of us were so confused. If you had only SAID you ordered a CHEESE fondue originally, there NEVER would have been any issue. But that's NOT what you said. I'm sorry but I, for one, am not a mind reader.

Now YOU get over YOURSELF. Saying &quot;I'm sorry I wasn't clear&quot; or &quot;I'm sorry I left out the cheese part in my original post&quot; would be a nice start. But yelling at people because they read what you wrote and then responded to it, instead of what you meant to say is really not going to get you anywhere.

Maybe it's just me, but when you disagree with what a poster says, why the need for such hostility? Would you react the same way in person? If so, I would imagine there's some people on this message board who have no friends in &quot;real life&quot;.

My original post was not hostile in the least, (or at least no more hostile than the poster was being to a restaurant for doing something that was his mistake, not theirs) but I did point out that if what the poster said he did was in fact what he did, then he was wrong to blame the restaurant. And yes, I'd say that to his face in real life. I have a lot of friends, most of them admire my honesty.
If even a close friend said &quot;I ordered vegetable fondue thinking it would have to have cheese, but it didn't&quot; I would NOT hesitate to tell them that it was their error --vegetable fondue doesn't have cheese. That's how this thread started off track -- by people telling subcon that what he said he did was simply his own mistake. That's what people do -- even with friends --explain what went wrong, not simply agree with them. If my close friend came back after being corrected and said, oh but I didn't order vegetable fondue, what I really ordered was cheese fondue with a plate of vegetables, I'm not sure what I would think -- but probably that they were right the first time.

If there is hostility in my later posts it's because this poster came back and totally changed his story and acts like those who didn't understand his now supposedly mistaken original scenario are the ones who are at fault. Yes, being blamed for not understanding what he &quot;meant to say&quot; instead of what he &quot;said&quot; sort of makes me &quot;hostile&quot; I guess.

I have often posted mistakes. I've gone back and corrected some, and when questioned on others, I have also said &quot;oops, yes, I meant to say it WAS NOT instead of it WAS&quot; or whatever. I had one of those just a few days ago. I don't think it's such a big deal to come back and say, &quot;whoops, sorry, I meant to say what we ordered was Cheese fondue with vegetables&quot;, but this poster seems clearly set to not even admit that he left out a very important detail and we who beleived he meant what he said are the &quot;villains&quot;. Sorry, I just don't buy that. We all make mistakes in what we post, why get so defensive if someone believes what we said? And that seems to be my big crime here -- I believed what he said the first time, and commented on it.

1. A cheese fondue with a vegetable plate doesn't make any sense at all. How would one cook vegetables in pure cheese, after all?!
Probably that's why they (also?) served the broth version of fondue (which in fact is much more common than the all cheese version or the chocolate variety). I do admit that a bouillan cube makes me cringe, though.

2. EUR 7.50 for a Martini is perfectly reasonable in Germany - in fact I'd consider it to be on the cheap side.
It would help to get acquainted with local price levels before getting aggravated about &quot;being ripped off&quot;.

3. It is quite uncommon for German restaurants to take something of the bill (<i>&quot;Rechnung&quot;</i> without an <i><b>&quot;s&quot;</b></i>) that was prepared and served <i>lege artis</i>.
Is it good hospitality to charge the OP in these circumstances? Not. But after all they were willing to compromise with the bill as I take it.

4. I have no affiliation with the establishment concerned or any other interest in it. But the increasing number of completely uninformed posts that despite obvious mistakes by the posters themselves lead to complaining around here is apalling.
If any German tourist to Austria would complain about getting a fillet mignon after having ordered <i>&quot;Lungenbraten&quot;</i> (which literally translates to &quot;roast of lung&quot;), they would be laughed at by the Austrians, too.
It usually helps to familiarise oneself with local customs and language before complaining about being &quot;ripped off&quot;.

I don't know about Germany, but in France, if you want a vegetable fondue (melted cheese with vegetables), you should order a raclette.

very funny discussion. a person goes to a restaurant and orders something he doesn't understand, posts here it was the restaurant's mistake, and then when he is corrected, claims he ordered something different from what he first said he ordered. then people get angry because no one can read what the poster said. if the poster is unable to keep his stories straight and gets angry that anyone tried to correct him that speaks volumes of why there might have been a problem with service when he made a mistake with what he ordered.

the post started by saying that it was a really slow day but the restaurant was crowded. some people must like the place. i have been to a nice fondue restaurant in munich but i am not sure it is this one. are there others? the place we went to is pretty fancy and expensive and all red inside. it was near the townhall. they do have a broth with vegetable fondue. after cooking your vegetables in the broth you drink the broth like soup. i was in a large group and we had several kinds of fondue but none of them with cheese. most were meat and oil, two of the women shared the vegetable one. the servers explained all the different kinds to us when we asked.

Michael,

Raclette: Prepared in small saucepans filled with your choice of potatoes, salami, vegetables, ham etc. and topped with a layer of cheese. The saucepans are then subjected to heat from above in a special device.

Vegetable Fondue: Vegetables of all sorts are bein attaced to long forks and then cooked in a pot of broth.

Cheese Fondue: Cheese melted in a pot along with a few shots of <i>Kirschwasser</i> schnaps. Then white bread of a baguette variety is being put on one of the long forks and soaked in the melted cheese.

hsv,

The raclette I know has a special cheese holder over a flame so that it melts a little at a time. You take the pre -ccoked (par-boiled?) vegetables that come on a servig dish and rug them against the melting cheese. That's what I saw in the cheese restaurant in Strasbourg, and have since the cheese holder elsewhere.

The above two posts just go to show how our opinions of what we THINK we're going to get are different from what we might actually get. I love raclette. I've had it several times like Michael describes it -- a special heater that holds a huge hunk of cheese and you lower the heater coil over to melt the cheese, then scrape it off. But in Zurich I was surprised to get a raclette just like hsv describes -- a sort of toaster oven with little handled &quot;pans&quot; that you put cheese in and put under the broiler.

Michael,

interesting.

My description fits what I am used to in Germany - and what I once had in the German speaking part of Switzerland. Thus I assumed it was universal.

Making a fuss about it, would be something different...

&quot;Making a fuss about it, would be something different..&quot;

Amen. Some of my most pleasurable dining experiences in Europe have been getting something totally different from what I expected it to be.

My typing is going downhill.