Epoca - Flims

The grand finale on our last evening of our stay at the Waldhaus Flims, we were blessed to enjoy a really culinary explosion at Epoca. We had a wonderful table right by the window, where we could enjoy the stunning view but also could grab a gaze in the open kitchen. It was great to observe the team work with absolute perfection but also having fun and passion. The team was remarkably young, which didn 't affect their professional attitude and expert knowledge. The food was just another level and a real culinary explosion. We really enjoyed every bite. Besides the amazing look and stunning display, the taste was extraordinary. Especially remarkable was the duck as well as the veil together with the non alcoholic beverage. I generally never comment any visit of restaurant or even do Instagram posts of food. In that specific case I couldn 't help myself to do both to honor the extraordinary composition of this wonderful, young, professional and talented team of the Epoca.

Buckle up. It’s not often that something is so incredibly terrible that you want to describe it in such detail. For the sake of transparency, I have informed both the hotel and restaurant about our experience and this upcoming review, it should come as no surprise. The hotel offered a sit down which we refused, given the way we were treated the night before, but made otherwise no attempt to explain or reach out. TLDR: AVOID AT ALL COSTS. This is the worst fine-dining labeled restaurant we’ve eaten at, ever, and the first one to score the elusive 1/5. Congratulations! Highlights: · Overall sub-par food, even for a non-fine-dining establishment · Incompetent (all of them and partially (not all rude and arrogant staff · Some courses were straight-up inedible · Price-gouging and switch&bait practices · As expensive as a 1 Michelin · Mitigating factor is if you like sweet honey bread in the middle of dinner The first thing that hits you when you sit down is the loud music. We kindly asked the waiter to turn it down and, after telling us that there is no volume switch but only on-off, he moved us further from the speakers instead since, “gastro needs some sound”. I thought I was in a fine dining restaurant and not in a club in Ibiza but I guess that’s an individual preference. What follows isn’t. To quickly establish our credentials, we eat at 16+ GM/Michelin starred places ~30-50 times a year depending on the year, we 've been to most 2/3 in Switzerland and know most of the chefs personally. You could say that when it comes to fine-dining, we do know our way around quite a bit. We were served the signature 4 appetizers (sweet/bitter/sour/salty, guess umami got lost? . The sweet was good, the bitter’s dough was a bit on the thick side. The sour was good. The salt was literally unsalted. Unsure whether this was supposed to be a clever joke? In the meantime, we were given both the menu and wine selection. I’ll leave aside the incredible inflexibility regarding the food choice, needless to say they are very set with their menu constellations. The wine selection was interesting. On the open wines page, no vintage years. When asked about it, the waiter informed us that they take whatever vintage is available. That makes sense since every year tastes and is priced the same. Ah wait, no it doesn’t and isn’t. Enters the first appetizer, a dim sum. I innocently put it in my mouth, realizing unfortunately too late that it was completely raw. I’m not talking about Italian Al dente variety, I’m talking about the Gordon Ramsey This is f raw variety. That dim sum had seen less heat than the North Pole. I can confidently say that this was the single most inedible dish I’ve been served at a restaurant with cloth napkins in my entire life. I promptly notified the server who looked at me perplexed, took back whatever was left of the dish, and left, the dish never to be heard of again. Enters the bread. Now that was interesting. We got two servings. That allowed us to discuss the benefits of reheating bread before cutting (variant A versus cutting before reheating (variant B . After carefully examining the data we came to the conclusion that both taste terrible. You expect fresh bread in a place like this, not reheated. Like any good play, or rollercoaster, you need a bit of a lull to enjoy the next high (or in this case, low . The first actual dish, Lobster, was alright. The textures were interesting, the tastes mixed well enough. While waiting for the next dish, a waiter suddenly shows up from nowhere with a plate of sweet honey bread (with actual honey in it . In the middle of dinner. And starts distributing it to patrons. That was a nice eccentric touch, and I started to wonder if all this was one big joke. The bread was supposed to be freshly baked. I think revisiting the term fresh would be generally a good idea for the team. The next dish came, and that was good. A pseudo raclette cheese composition with hazelnuts, egg yolk and Périgord truffle. Quite tasty, though I often say that you can make anything taste good with truffles, it’s essentially the ketchup of the rich. Still, credit where credit is due, especially when it 's so sparse. Unfortunately this was the last tasty dish of the night. Followed a long pause before the main. That’s when we asked for the wines again and discovered that the ones on the menu are not the ones that are available. The wines which are in fact available are told to you ad hoc and the open wine recommended by the waiter will run you 40% more expensive that the most expensive one in the menu. It’s a nice trick but one I would expect in a tourist trap, not a self-labeled alpine fine dining restaurant. Right before the main we were served a small palate cleanser, a sorbet, which was also not bad. We were then served the wine we selected and one of them seemed corked. Unsure, I asked the waiter who again took the glass and disappeared into the unknown, leaving another culinary mystery unsolved. The main was seriously underwhelming, nowhere near what you would expect. The entrecôte was quite chewy and the flavors were weirdly mixed (not sure what mint has to do with meat? . At this point however we felt more like private Ryan trying to get home as fast as possible. We were finally almost there, at the end of the tunnel, with only dessert for my partner and cheese for me to go. But as with every adventure, you want to finish on a high. What follows left me so dumbfounded, I spilled half the wine... Now, before every course they bring a small paper that explains the upcoming dish and this was no exception. It proudly advertised the cheese-cart cheeses as coming from a very well-known local cheesemaker with a selection of over 100 cheeses! You can imagine my excitement, I love cheese and it’s not like much could go wrong. As the waiter approached with the cheese cart, I was a little alarmed at the small size. Wondering what marvel of technology could hide such an amount of fermented milk in such a small case? As he ceremoniously opened the lid, I was greeted by the saddest view in a long while: 7 lonely cheeses arranged around a minuscule bowl of chutney. Mind you that this isn’t the actual dish, it’s the cheese cart! I asked this poor unwilling participant in what was obviously a scientific experiment about kitchen nightmares, what was up, 7 seems a little less than 100? His retort was that it would be difficult to have many cheeses because of the effort involved. Okay. Resolved to make the best of this misery I asked if I could have more soft cheeses (there was only one . He said he 'd check and lo and behold came back 10 minutes later with an additional two. I’ve included the final composition as a picture because it says more than I ever could. The cheeses were cold (straight from the fridge , and as artisanal as a Big Mac (actually a Big Mac is handmade, this might have been less artisanal, definitely less tasty . I had to explicitly ask for the bread, which was stale, reheated and inedible. I took one bite of each and nearly had to leave the room. That dish costs 30$. When I showed the picture to the reception of the hotel the next day, they were as incredulous as me. In hindsight, I should have sent the dish back but I was too shocked to do anything. The bill came. 429 CHF for less food per person than to feed a child, half of which was inedible, and 4 glasses of wine. To top it all off, before we left, the chef paid us a visit (right after my partner was served a coffee she never asked for . He asked us how it was and we gave him the feedback above, albeit more succinct, perhaps less structured and its snippy tone no doubt exacerbated by the frustration we were feeling at that point. What astonished us was the response. Instead of admitting or even trying to explain the several mishaps, nothing came. No explanation, no actual excuses. When I mentioned that the prices simply did not match the offering, an obviously very touchy subject, he immediately stonewalled us, told us we were the first guests to ever complain (though some reviews here seem to contradict that statement and told us in a roundabout way that we probably don 't understand much about food (which I thought was ironic given what we had just experienced . He finally let us understand that he wouldn 't welcome us back which is for the best since that place is probably just not for us. He might be right. If you like loud music, uncooked pasta, haphazard service, bad cheeses, arrogant staff and a price quality ratio that is more skewed than the Pisa tower, this is definitely the place for you. If you’re like us and you don’t, avoid at all costs.

Nachdem wir an Ostern begeistert mit drei Generationen im Epoca waren, kamen wir zu Auffahrt erneut, zum neuem Menu und um die Herzlichkeit des Teams (allen voran Restaurantleitung Lena! Danke!!! bei feinem Essen zu genießen.Wunderbare Kreationen! Ein Gaumenschmaus!Wer noch nicht da war, ein wunderschöner Raum ist das Epoca zusätzlich!Vielen Dank!

Meine erste Bewertung fürs Epoca: 4, die zweite: 5, die dritte: 6!Nochmal auf allen Ebenen verbessert!Hier entwickelt sich etwas Grosses!Man geht hier kulinarisch ganz neue Wege!Die Jakobsmuscheln waren eine Mischung aus Frechheit uns Salzspiel grosses Kino einer der besten Gänge, die ich jemals genossen habe!Der junge Küchenchef ist überreif für mindestens einen Stern!Und an Paule mit den sympatischen jungen Ladies im Service: Besser geht nicht!!! Garantiert wieder, Gruss ans Team!Mo

Zur Beginn muss ich zugeben: Wir sind schon seit einigen Jahren Tristan Fans. Im Opus V in Mannheim hatten wir einige wunderbare und unvergessliche gastronomische Erlebnisse. Tristans Still, nicht nur in der Präsentation der Gerichte sondern auch in der sehr gewagten Kombination der Zutaten perfekt zu sein habe ich schon immer bewundert. Im Época hatten wir also entsprechend hohe Erwartungen und waren nicht überrascht, als diese bei vielen der Kreationen deutlich übertroffen wurden. Eine Freude für den Gaumen, eigentlich für alle Geschmackssinne!Das Restaurantambiente ist elegant aber nicht steif, man fühlt sich gleich wohl insbesondere wegen des Blicks auf die Berge. Das Serviceteam ist jung aber erfahren und kompetent zugleich. Und nicht nur das, auch nett, flexibel, höflich! Die gesunde Mischung zwischen diskret und unterhaltsam, würde ich sagen. Das einzige, was noch nicht auf dem Niveau vom Menü ist, ist die Weinkarte. Sie hat wirklich Verbesserungspotential. Es muss nicht Petrus oder Margaux sein, aber vielleicht doch besondere Weine, weil man immerhin einen solchen Restaurantbesuch mit etwas besonderem verbindet. Eine abwechslungsreichere Karte muss her! Diese einzigartigen Gerichte schreien nach würdiger Begleitung. Zum Glück gibt es Paule, den Sommelier, der uns immer wieder mit Flaschen außerhalb der Karte überraschen konnte.Zur Location in der Schweiz, ein fantastisch gelegenes Hotel mit atemberaubender Aussicht auf die Berge und viel Flair (das Waldhaus Flims verdient eine separate Bewertung).Alles in allem ein mehr als gelungenes Erlebnis, das Lust auf mehr macht (wir freuen uns auf die neue Karte ab Mai 2021)!!!