Restaurant Review: O's American Restaurant.

I came across this restaurant (situated near the Nyhavn-area, at the bottom of Gothersgade) when I was searching for a place to get some good milkshake in Copenhagen. Someone was raving about this American-style restaurant, called O’s American Restaurant, and said that the shakes were practically the cat’s pajamas. They are so popular that they even have two restaurants in central Copenhagen, so I decided to have a look for myself, and this is how it was: BAD. Do you see? B-A-D. There is no other word for it. It wasn’t terrible, it certainly wasn’t good, it was just plain old BAD. And I’ll tell you why:

I went there, hoping to get some lunch. I walked in (seeing the form from ministry of food’s check-up last month and O’s hadn’t exactly aced the test, to put it that way – I should have known straightaway that this was a bad sign), saw the décor, which was sad (lots of dark wood and everything looked worned down), and the locale was practically empty. A very soft-spoken waitress told us to “sit down anywhere – it’s all available, as you can see”. We sat down in a booth and had a look at the menu, which did look promising. The prices were sympathetic, and they had lots of different courses, but based mostly on burgers and sandwiches. I had the BLT and macaroni and cheese side order, and a lemon iced tea, and my boyfriend had a burger and a glass of tap water. Now, first of all, the waitress (you know, the soft-spoken one) took about 20 minutes to come and take our order, even though there were no other customers and we had our menus closed so she would see that we were ready to order. When she finally trotted along, we ordered, and about a million years later the “food” arrived. My BLT was basically some soft lettuce, one piece of tomato, and bacon and toast which resembled charcoal more than it did food. I even cut my gums on the toast, that’s how hard it was! Also, there were unidentifiable flakes of something-or-other at the bottom of my iced tea. Gross. And according to my boyfriend, the burger was also pretty nondescript.

After finishing the meal, we tried to get the waitress’ attention for a looooooooooooooooooooooooong time, and finally succeeded in ordering one banana milkshake. We were apprehensive, but since we had been told that the shakes were so good, we felt we had to try them. So, were they any good, you ask? My reply would have to be – it was okay. It was certainly nothing to write home about. It tasted pretty much like something I could have made at home.

And what really bugged me on the whole was the complete lack of creativity with the dishes. There was no cherry in the milkshake, no garnish of any kind on the toast, and not even a french fry was seen with the burger. Really – the whole meal was BORING. I was overjoyed when I had finished, and was also irritated that I had spent the good part of an hour which I would never get back in that place.

Oh, and I should add that this is another of those places in Copenhagen that doesn’t accept foreign credit cards, even though they’re Visa. This is in theory fine with me, but I think they should let customers know in advance!? So end of story was that I had to roam the block, looking for an ATM and coming back to settle the bill. We left there feeling completely disillusioned, because we had so looked forward to enjoying a nice meal. It’s really dissapointing when the people who work in a restaurant show so little interest in food and customer service. I’d give this restaurant a big, fat F.