Nikita T.
Yelp
Sigh. I was soooo excited to bring my vegan friend to Ipanema and their menu was so promising.
The first time I came to Ipanema, a few weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon, my 2 friends and I walked in and stood at the front (where it says to wait to be seated) for about 10 mins without anyone acknowledging us. It was a little busy but not packed. Finally after some time I went up to a server who had come behind the bar to ask how long the wait was. He was obviously very flustered and said he was the only one working, he could seat us in maybe 15 mins but wouldn't take our order for probably 45 mins. We ended up leaving. I understand how stressful it is to be working alone but wish he would've at least acknowledged us when we came in.
This time, my friends and I came in on a Friday night. It was pretty packed. We waited at the front for a few minutes before a server came and let us know she'd wipe down a table for us to sit at. Service was definitely slow, and for a Friday night, I get it. We ordered the tofu wings before the server went "Wait, let me check on something." She went to the back and came back a few minutes later to inform us they were out of breading... meaning we couldn't order any of the battered fried items (which several menu items were - including the tofu wings and the "chicken" and waffles entree my friend was going to get). We ended up getting the truffle fries for an app. I ordered the reuben with a side of mac and cheese. Both my friends got lasagna.
The truffle fries were good, it's kinda hard to mess those up, except the vegan cheese they put on it wasn't really melted at all and was mostly sitting at the bottom of the plate, not on top? That was odd. The sauce they came with was very good.
My tempeh reuben was... OVERPOWERINGLY mustardy. I basically couldn't taste anything but the very strong mustard seed taste. The thousand island, sauerkraut, and tempeh were completely drowned out by this flavor. It was so disappointing because I'd been very excited about it. The mac and cheese had a wonderful texture but a sweet flavor that wasn't great. When I added salt and pepper it helped a lot though. I tried a bite of my friends lasagna and it was actually quite good. They both also said the garlic bread it came with was great. That being said we all agreed that $9 for the small truffle fries app and $22 for the lasagna were really overpriced. The price of my reuben, which included my side, was $15 which was very reasonable.
After our orders were taken the service got progressively worse. We had to wait ages to ask for boxes... then after receiving the boxes we sat at our table for an eternity while our server was on her phone near the bar. Eventually we were able to flag her down for our check but we were waiting a very long time.