Restaurant review: It's not sexy

Lollypop, 13 Decebal Blvd, tel 0724 948 820,
www.lollypop.ro
Michael Barclay

For years I have espoused Decebal as one of the best eating areas in the capital. There are numerous restaurants lining this vast street, both expensive and low cost, with quality levels that fill the spectrum from average to relatively good. And there is Lollypop!

Its very name has a connotation of under-aged sleaze about it, and this impression is not helped by its logo of a cartoon caricature of a scantily attired ‘lady’ sitting in a ludicrously provocative pose on a sofa. Clearly the impression is that there is something extra on offer which is not listed on the menu, and it is for this reason both my friends and myself have studiously avoided this place.
But they have survived for a few years, and this fact presses my curiosity button. So is it really a restaurant? Read on and see.

The décor is pure tacky, shiny ‘bling’. Lots of chrome and silver surrounding garish, multicolored chairs, it is simply a monument to bad taste. And on the subject of bad taste, they extended it to their food, which we found to be inedible.

What we did not find, however, was any sign of the sleazy offerings as implied in their logo and name. It really was a café but with delusions of gastronomic grandeur. The menu boasted 79 dishes, which you and I know is utterly unsustainable, thereby guaranteeing that they will screw up the dishes up totally. And they did.

I asked if everything listed on the menu was ‘on’. “Yes” was the reply. So we ordered two starters and two mains, which took an unbelievable 45 minutes to arrive. I questioned this with our waiter, and the smart-ass gave me the glib answer that the delay was because we wanted all four dishes at once.

Whoooooah there – hold the horses! With a capacity of 80 covers, if the place was full with each person ordering a starter and main, you can logically extrapolate these figures to a time of 18 hours to serve the last customer. Of course, this will not happen because there are not 80 people dumb enough to go and order at once, but I have made my point!

Off I went to a ‘Thai Green Curry’. This was a fraud, for it was nothing of the sort. It should be made with lemon grass, Thai chili, Thai basil, Thai ginger (galangal) lime leaves, coconut milk, coriander, cumin, shrimp paste and palm sugar. What I got was a disgusting mush in which N-O-N-E of the aforementioned were used or identifiable. The House was cheating us with this falsely named dish. And it got worse.

They continued the deception with a sexy sounding ‘Jumbo prawns with asparagus, mashed pumpkins, celeriac mash with SAFFRON and aioli’ (garlic and olive oil). Bullshit! After being told that they had everything on the menu, our glib, flippant waiter Mr Smart-Ass confessed that they had no jumbo prawns, so I settled for baby prawns. But the dish arrived with flavorless mashed celeriac and pumpkin, both of which were devoid of seasoning and soaked with water. Worse still, there was no asparagus. I asked Mr Smart-Ass for my missing asparagus.

“Oh … sorry but the chef just told me there was no asparagus available when I collected your dish. “
The liar was making it up as he went along.
“There is no Saffron in my dish,” I told him.
Smart-Ass replied, “Yes there is, it’s inside the mash.”
Of course it wasn’t. He neither knew nor cared. Saffron is the world’s most expensive herb. It is instantly identified as a fragile, little orange stick.
“Right, tell the chef to show me a sample of his alleged saffron.”
Smart-Ass swaggered back to me and showed me a sample of cheap, brown supermarket curry powder.

If Romania was a true European country (which it will never be in our lifetime) and embraced European culture, values, standards and integrity, this place would be closed by the authorities, and prosecuted for the crime of fraud.

More mis-described dishes followed. Blondie ordered a ‘Chicken, bacon and Mozzarella with gratin potato’. The last potato dish means sliced potato cooked in cream, onion, white wine and topped with melted cheese to the French, and using the same word it should be sliced potato topped with cheese to the Romanians. But they failed on both accounts, as it came as a dirty brown mash containing vegetable bits.

We were so utterly pissed off with this catalogue of lies that I held my head in my hands in fearful anticipation of our ‘fajitas with guacamole, salsa and sour cream’. All my fears were well founded, for the fajita contained chicken in an unnecessary brown gungy sauce, there was no guacamole – another House lie – as too was the so-called salsa which was nothing more than chopped tomato.

So, we had no jumbo prawns, no correct salsa, no correct green curry, no guacamole, no saffron and no seasoning. And guess what – no edible good food! This dump is just a bad joke.
I predict it will be a cold day in Hell when Romania adopts a Standards Authority with the power and will to prosecute fraudulently described restaurant dishes, because unlike the rest of Europe, Romania just doesn’t care!

michaelbarclay32@gmail.com

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