Nicolas
Google
Ever since my first visit more than 5 years ago, Konstantin Filippou had been one of my heros of fine dining. I'm a nerd when it comes to food and together with my partner we frequently explore places all over the world. That evening with its almost brutal attention to detail, the opinionated, aggressive approach to a signature cuisine blew my mind and I still think back often, remembering how we left that place in positive disbelief whether something that perfect can even exist.
When we returned yesterday after all these years, it was one of these nights when we'd rather not have left the hotel. We had been looking forward to this for months, and everything started nicely, the amuse was brilliant, aperitif well suited.
Then a series of events unfolded that took away attention from the food. Which - important to say- was beautifully crafted and flavorwise very well executed (compliments to the kitchen!). To us, it maybe didn't feel as perfectly refined as 5 years ago - but that's personal taste and shouldn't matter here.
It all started with the wine. We ordered an aged bottle of white burgundy and when the server arrived found it to be a beautiful bottle, if maybe with a bit of "youthful aggression". Then I looked at the cork and saw they had given us a different vintage that was 4 years younger than on the wine list. "Honest mistake", I thought and talked to the sommelier who said "I should've let you know" and pointed towards the head sommelière, as if she was responsible. He owned up to the mistake later by saying they would offer us something nice later, she never did even mention it. This kind of mistake is not minor for a restaurant of this level, this is not a pizzeria that now serves the 2019 pinot grigio and forgot to update the menu. And to be honest, it left the feeling there could be intention behind that. Serving a different vintage can make a lot of a purchase price difference for the restaurant after all.
I don't want to go into detail about the rest of the night, there was a lot that went wrong, from a former guest's chewing gum under the table to missed orders, nobody asking whether we want coffee for / after dessert, rhythm issues in food service and the apology for the wine coming in form of a tannic, heavy red wine that was served in the middle of a very sweet dessert. But sometimes there's these black Monday kind of nights where everything goes wrong and our server and also the "junior" sommelier tried their best to keep us happy, so shout out to them.
What was really missing, was the feeling of coordination and ownership by a proper restaurant manager. Coming to our table, offering a proper apology and a mitigation is a basic standard in a 2 star restaurant when something goes wrong, even if the guests are unhappy without reason I've seen people go above and beyond. It's what great hospitality should be about.
The price for a night like this pays respect to artistic creativity, brilliant craftsmanship and last but not least a beautiful experience with flawless service. It's a wonderful evening of food theater if you wish. This night, we decided not to come back again. Our waiter was lovely, the sommelier owned up to a mistake, but the overall lack of ownership felt like this is a fading star.
And here's one last thing that brought this from 4 to 3 stars: over the course of the years I've never seen a toilet more disgusting than this in a michelin star restaurant. The only way to dry your hands was a box of cosmetic tissues and the toilet itself deteriorated to the displayed state over the course of the night, obviously nobody checked on it for more than 2 hours. Of course as somebody must've left it like that you would also expect more decency on the guest's side, but that doesn't free you guys from the task of checking.
Overall, dear Konstantin Filippou: this wasn't good. Maybe you should have a discussion about ownership with your senior staff. In any case I hope you pull your stuff together and come back to previous times' flawlessness, we'll keep remembering that dearly until then.