“Zuane Uppp, Zuane Downnnn”

A rant from the past ;)


Most of you remember that nursery rhyme with the girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead? Well if one could apply the same sentiment to restaurants, Zuane would be the clear winner. When ze food iz good, eet iz very very good, and when ze food is bad, eet iz terrible!

The food at Zuane swings from one extreme to another, and all this I'm talking about in a week. I was introduced to Zuane when I had a real craving for Italian food (just the way mother makes it ;) ).... I went with a group of friends and the food was delish!

We ordered the pasta, pizza and to end with; the rather dubious sounding sweet chocolate ravioli, which turned out to be divine. Everything was perfect and the pleasure of finding real Italian food in Dar put us on cloud nine.

Well.... I was bitten by the Italian food bug, and a few days later saw me heading back there for take away. (same spinach ricotta ravioli and pizza) The place was rather crowded but I got my food and headed home. This time the food was slightly below the first great impression the place had on me; for one thing a lot less cheese!

No matter. Everyone is allowed a bad day. So two days later, once more I took a guest and we headed back to Zuane. The food took quite a while in arriving and when it finally did, my guest took one bite and spat out the spinach ricotta ravioli (the same one ordered twice before in a week)! I was shocked. I leaned over to try a bite and to my dismay the savory dish was as sweet as a desert! 

We asked for the manager and he took some 20 minutes in arriving, in a foul mood. (Neither of us had eaten more than a bite). When we explained what the problem was he gave us a condescending look and proceeded to enlighten us that yes, the ravioli did call for honey and zometimes it had less and zometimes eet had more honey, but the taste was always the same... umm yeah right and I fell off the Christmas tree yesterday!

After spending some 10 minutes or more in this vein with no sign of an apology or other food in view, we decided to end this farce, asked for the bill (which we paid in full), and headed off to good ole Spurs for some real food.

I find it a shame that we had this experience, since it is difficult at the best of times to find consistently good quality food in Dar and I thought we had a winner. More than anything, it was the attitude that really put us off. Has no one here ever heard of 'the customer is always right'? Or it could just be that my taste buds went through a massive makeover in a week and I can't tell good food from bad any more.... ..and outside pink pigs with silver wings are flying in a green sky ;)


NB: For those brave enough, here are recipes for chocolate ravioli:


http://www.yummly.com/recipes/chocolate-ravioli


http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/chocolate-hazelnut-ravioli-recipe/index.html