Restaurant review: Daimon Fitness Club Restaurant

Daimon Fitness Club Restaurant, Tineretului Park, tel 021 330 5071

It is a weird experience eating my heart out in a fitness center. But that is where I am, and I got here by accompanying a family of friends, resplendent with screaming kids, to Tineretului Park. The ‘kid factor’ here is important because it has the biggest kiddie open air funfair in Bucharest.

Michael Barclay

If you want an escape from the brats, you can join the grown-up brats in the well equipped Daimon Gym and tennis courts, and to escape the grown-up fitness brats you could do as I did and stuff your face in their surprising restaurant.

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And it is surprising for two reasons: The interior is just cheap brown tables with cheap brown chairs surrounded by brownish walls and brown terracotta floor tiles. But the surprise arrives with the menu. It boasts 140 dishes, which is a strutting bluff which too many local restaurants adhere to. There was no way they could stock up and be geared for 140 dishes, so I knew instinctively that the waiter would come back to our table apologizing for non-existent dishes. But what of the dishes they could produce…well read on and see!

So Blondie ordered a Bloody Mary but they had no Tabasco, celery or celery salt. So it was not a Bloody Mary. We had a waiter’s apology instead. He apologized again when we ordered a ‘roast lamb with egg, bacon, pancake and tzatziki sauce’. Another apology came when we ordered the non-existent ‘roast beef with potatoes’ and the ‘roast..’ Oh, what is the point of listing them? They had no roast dishes, but like every other Bucharest restaurant, they refuse to strike the phantom dishes off the menu.

But what we did get was good. So Blondie dived into a ‘salmon tartar’. This dish is a modern invention of a mere 10 years or so ago, based upon the classic ‘beef tartar’. Because it is so new, there are no rules as to how to make it. But suffice it to say it must contain chopped fresh raw salmon with olive oil and onions – and after that the kitchen can add anything they choose, from capers to Worcester sauce and so on. But we were both amazed when it arrived, for not only did Blondie squeal with delight at the taste, but it was huge. A massive amount of hot toast, a mountain of butter and a salad accompanied this ‘starter’, which was so generous in size that it could have been served as a main course.

Likewise with my starter of ‘Parma ham with shaved Parmesan’. It was gigantic and I ended up boxing it to take home for breakfast. We passed on 10 further starters which were unremarkable in the House’s choice, and all priced around RON 30, including: calamari, prosciutto, beef Carpaccio and fried Camembert.

Off to the grill section of the menu which really just contained the usual grilled stuff of chicken, pork, lamb and trout. But my eye was caught by the grilled ‘octopus with spicy tomatoes, garlic oil, mayo, sour cream and parsley’. Oh yes, I am going back to try that one out. At prices ranging from RON 20-80 there was ‘beef sirloin in balsamic vinegar sauce’, ‘beef sirloin with mushrooms’, beef sirloin with all of the above plus sour cream and so on. This is how they build up a menu of 140 dishes. They just add another vegetable and call it a different dish.

So a similar theme occurred with their 12 chicken dishes, one of which had us falling off our seats with good humored laughter, for they had ‘IRISH chicken’. Oh come on, give me a break. It was chicken with pepper, carrots, zucchini and yogurt. If it was genuinely Irish chicken, it would contain no chicken!

There were 18 pastas, all of which were the usual suspects, so I do not have to list them. But Blondie gets the star award for her choice of ‘smoked ham joint’. It was a slow casseroled smoked ham on the bone, and it was as good as I have ever experienced in this country. Bravo House. I followed with ‘seafood with white wine, garlic and dried chili’. It arrived steaming with calamari, moules, baby octopus and large prawns, all at RON 35. There was no rice or salad, as none was necessary. This huge dish had been ‘padded out’ or ‘in-filled’ with shredded crabstick to give it bulk. It was good.

We passed on 18 pastas and 23 pizzas and too full to eat any more, I noticed their ‘beef in a salt crust, with herbs, risotto, chicken and asparagus.’ That’s it. I am definitely going back there.

mab.media@dnt.ro