Zebra, Odessa

David Ritter

July 11, 2012

In this evaluation "5" is the lowest character.

This is a restaurant you do not want to visit unless you are a masochist. The restaurant Zebra serves the worse food I have ever experienced in a restaurant. The service of the waiter was even worse. Nobody in the restaurant spoke English at all – not one word. The prices however are astronomically high, which gives this restaurant the lowest possible value for the money. Even though you bring a local translator and ask for a menu card in English we did not get it. First when we received the bill and complained the administrator of the restaurant admitted they had a menu card in English. A simple meal (one dish) with a cup of tea (and nothing else to drink) can in this restaurant cost you more than 300 $ (USD). When you look at the menu card you do not get any idea of the price level compared to when you get the bill… Even though you complain about the food before you get the bill the restaurant will force you to pay the full price. In our case the administrator of the restaurant called for two muscle men, which prevented us from leaving the restaurant before we had paid the full price. This is not a joke, but facts! If you are a foreign guest you should particularly beware if you are placed at a table far away from other local guests, as this can be used by the restaurant to prepare for such potential conflicts with guests.

We were 3 guests who visited this restaurant. We all ordered only one dish each. The dishes for the first two guests were served after only ten minutes, while the dish for the third guest first was served after 30 minutes, even though it was cold fish, which had not been cooked in any way (the fish also was served without anything else at all). The food tasted so terrible that we had to go somew here else to get something to eat afterwards, while most of the food served in this restaurant was left on the plates.

The restaurant is located at the sea, but the view there is otherwise not anything special.

The restaurant serves food at an outdoor terrace, and inside. The inside of the part of the restaurant had a common and cheap style and atmosphere. The most dominant peace of furniture in the room was a big flat screen television on the wall, which is was not possible to turn off.

If local people recommend you to go to this restaurant with them, you need to be extremely careful. This was the case for us, w here one local person was among the guest, and this person quickly ordered something in Russian as soon as we sat down. It was later our impression that the local guest had some kind of agreement to lure foreign guests to this restaurant, and that this local person then got a peace of the spoil from an over expensive dinner, event though it would be impossible to proof such a thing.

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