Papa’s Real Food

Monday, August 4th, 2014

Reviewed by Veralda Schmidt

As a resient of Pretoria, I have had many excellent meals at Papas and have reommended it to many guets and friends over the years. However that is about to change. Two weeks ago I took a friend from CT out for breakfast. On that morning the service was terrible and it was clear that we had a 'trainee' waiter, although the restaurant was nearly empty. Staff decided to stand right next to our table and socialise at the top of their voices and when we asked them to 'take the conversation elsewhere' we were frowned upon. On top of that the food was really mediocre and we decided to go elsewhere. Yesterday a friend invited us to join her birthday celebration. Our booking was fo 12:30 and just after 13:00 we (12 of us) were ready to order. Her other guests travel from Johannesburg and Kempton Park. At 14:45 the waiter brought raw and soggy foccacia breads and told us the food will be 5 more minutes. By then we were really hungry and had to enquire about the food several times. The 12 dishes came out 1 by one from 15:00 onwards. By the time the last meal arrived, the first guests finished their food. Those who ordered fish and chips had over-cooked dark brown batter (sign of old oil) fish and grey, sogged with oil potatoes. Four of us ordered the haddock and mussels. My fish was over cooked, my partner's mussels were missing and the hosts fish was raw and the mussels smelt very bad - he is in fact not well today. The other meals looked OK, but nobody raved. The services was good, but at no point was any management around or available to talk to about the lack of cooperation from the kitchen. We are very dissappointed as Papas has been an icon in Hatfield and the setting is perfect, but something is seriously wrong.