Restaurant: Sensi - for a sense of being yelled at!

There are restaurants that take customer service to a whole other level - but not in a good way! We had quite an experience at SENSI concept store!

To start with, we really wanted to like the restaurant! It had that kind of laid back atmosphere where you think you can enjoy a nice evening with food, wine, friends and even some music. You are willing to accept that things don't go as planned and that everything on the menu is not available, because c'mon - c´est la vie! And to be fair, the young people of the staff were super friendly!

The rest of the evening, well... First of all, it was ice cold in the restaurant, because they insisted on keeping the door open for people to come in for their buffet option. But seriously, when it is cold outside it will get cold inside if you don't shut the door. As a customer, you don't get to keep your body temperature up by running around in the restaurant, as you will be sitting at your table, freezing. And once you freeze, you stop enjoying your stay. There is no reason to keep the door open as you can advertise your existence with blackboards and signs and whatnot - like most other restaurants do!

Then we ordered some starters and the main course. We wanted to share our starters, so we ordered one plate of meats (Italian sausages and hams) and one plate of cheese. We even asked if we could do that (share) and they said yes. Then each person wanted a pasta as a main course. Pretty simple, you would think. At first, we were positively surprised as they brought us some extra appetizers on the house, and they were really delicious! Then, however, they bring us the pasta, without having brought the appetizers that we ordered. Ok, no problem, we are flexible - we said that we can start with the pasta and have the meat/cheese plates afterwards.

The pasta dishes were kind of lame. For example, the pasta with pesto and ricotta had a nice taste, but there was way too much sauce. Never ever drown your pasta! The pasta with truffles was just boring; looked like pasta and sand, and it didn't really have much taste. The pasta with vegetables looked nice and tasted ok. Mediocre dishes, but okay, you can live with that.

Then they bring the meat and cheese plates and they were awesome! There was a lot to eat and we even joked about them bringing this after the pasta as customers would otherwise cancel the main course. So we were really happy with this one!

Coffee was ok, tea was kind of like boring tea from a bag with some weird foam on top. Meeh. And no desserts available.

Up to this you could say that you were in for a mediocre restaurant experience with some lows and some highs. You still had the idea that you could come back, but perhaps once the weather gets warmer. But this is when things started to go really bad. We asked for the check. When the check came, they had charged us 120 euros for the starters alone! This was ridiculous; one plate cost 15 euros, so the cost should have been 30 euros. At first we thought it was just a mistake, so we asked the staff to have a look. This is when hell broke loose! The woman in the restaurant started to literally shout at us in Italian! She kept screaming at us and claimed that we had ordered two plates per person and not two plates for all of us. She even brought out the smaller plates and started to waive them at us, like we were stupid customers or something. Like it would be ridiculous to order such small plates for several people. (Well, excuse me, but it would be ridiculous to order two such plates per person, and an honest restaurant would at least have informed the customer of what they were about to do). As she left our table she even kept on screaming at us from halfway down the hall. It was something like none of us had ever EVER experienced in a restaurant before. After a while we got her to bring back the menus and we again pointed out what we had ordered.

Now here's the thing. The restaurant made the mistake. We understand that it is unfortunate, but these things happen. Man up to your mistake and don't yell at the customer - especially since we had even asked when ordering whether sharing was possible!!! Also, had she been friendly, we would most definitely have left a huge tip to cover some of the pain, because the plates were delicious. But being screamed at - well, it destroyed our evening. We did not even want to stay for the jazz evening. Nor do we want to go back ever again. It didn't help that she later on kind of apologised. Especially since we ended up paying 18 euros too much anyway, but we were so tired being yelled at that we just wanted to leave...

So, rating this restaurant is not easy. I am trying to be as fair as I can and not let one person's behaviour affect everything, but we all know that service is half the restaurant experience.

Grades given by Good Food in Belgium:
Food: 3 (2 for the pasta, 4 for the rest)
Atmosphere: 1+ (3 had they kept the door shut)
Friendliness of staff: 1 (4 for the young people, "minus one hundred" for the lady)
Would I go there again: NO!!!
Would I recommend the place: No!
Value for money: no

And I truly feel sad to write this review, because as I said in the beginning - we really wanted to like this place, and had the service been friendly, we would have left remembering the highs and forgiving the lows. But there is a limit to everything! 

The reviews on TripAdvisor are very good, which is why we also had high expectations.