Genestar. Weird name for a restaurant. Sounds more like a mobile phone network, you know the kind of thing: rubbish reception, appalling service, constantly being cut off, then charged for things you either didn’t ask for or didn’t want.
Still, at least most mobile phones have a menu. Which is more than you can say about Genestar. No menu. No choice. No wonder we left feeling a little disappointed.
Imagine you’ve got a bunch of people coming round to dinner and you’ve forgotten to shop. There are some cabbages and cauliflower in the vegetable rack. There’s a bit of tired old lettuce somewhere, LOADS of fruit – peaches, berries, apricots – a bit of scraggy old chicken and some fish. But hey – never mind we’ve got tons and tons of balsamic, lots of mustard and a cellarful of salt. Add some honey and you’ve got a recipe for something – possibly printing money.
The evening at Genestar doesn’t start well. And got worse. The place, though lauded in one particular guide book as a gastronomic delight, is as unpromising as it is unprepossessing.
Situated just outside the walls of the old town in Alcudia, it’s half a mile’s distance from the old Es Convent and a million miles away in quality.
There’s nothing to forewarn you that there is no menu. So you’re fed at the whim of the chef.
In our case that was cabbage and cauliflower soup. (Mmm if THAT had been on the menu we’d have all gone for it unerringly – so light, so refreshing, so promising on a hot summer’s night).
This was followed by a soggy salad, drizzled in balsamic. (Sorry, did I say drizzled? I meant dribbled. Or drenched. Or drowned).
The salmon in peach sauce was actually quite nice in a ‘quaite naice’ kind of way. Bit too sweet for my liking, but at last something edible. In the same way that Sunny Delight is something drinkable.
Sadly the same couldn’t be said for the Chicken in Red Berries sauce. Thick, cloying, salty and somehow it lingered for hours after. And not in a good way.
All this was finished off by an Apricot Tart which might just have past muster in a school canteen for Tuesday lunch but was way, way short of what you’d expect in a so-called serious restaurant.
Price? Well not bad at 150 Euros for 4. And I hear you saying that in any restaurant, you gets what you pays for.
The trouble is, at Genestar, you gets what you’re given!