Pas Ramazi

So, my friend varske was here, from Tbilisi, and we thought we would try out the new Georgian restaurant in Vilnius. Called 'Pas Ramazi' (I've never come across the name Ramaz in Georgia), it is situated in Valakampiu (Valakupiu?), on the riverside beside the Antakalnis/Zirmunu bridge. It's a nice modern building, with a large balcony facing the river, and yesterday the wind. The trouble with these huge Kalnapilis parasols is that they are so big they cannot be put down very easily, to catch some warming sun.

The meal was ok; my Georgian salad, with a walnut sauce was nice, as was varske's aubergine salad. Then she had chicken tabaka - nothing special Georgian about this, you get it anywhere in the former Soviet Union, and I had a nice shashlik with salady things alongside, though no starch (eg chips, rice, potatoes etc). Along that came a nice bottle of Saperavi.

Then came the bill - 199 LT for us two! That's shocking! Those salads were 22 or 23 LT each, the main courses 30 LT each, and the wine a whopping 60 LT for the bottle. Normally restaurants have one price per glass (here 8 LT for 100 mls), and another for the bottle, usually less than the sum of the glasses in the bottle. Not in this case - the price of the bottle was exactly 7.5 times the price of a glass. That's just greedy.

Not sure what customers they wish to attract; for foreigners it is too difficult to find - it's quite hidden, and the menus are not in English, but these prices....who is prepared to pay that? Answers on a postcard....

Definitely not a good buy!

Bit unfortunate that this restaurant in Vokieciu 24 is called 'Zemaiciu smukle', 'zemas' meaning 'low' in Lithuanian.

It used to be great for food and atmosphere. Never one great on access for the disabled, or speed of service, but the food and their home-brewed beer were great.

Alas, no longer. Friends and I, who always meet at Sue's Indian Raja, fancied a change (I fancied a change) and so we went to Zemaiciu where years ago we had had many pleasant evenings.

We had a small problem - my friends were a bit late, I did not have a watch and thought they were very late indeed, or in the wrong place, and so I had ordered. Which meant that my food arrived before their's - though they might have waited with my main course....

My starter was ok; kind of a herring thing with dinky little mushrooms and nice potatoes - but what can go wrong with boiled potatoes? Can't remember what starters my friends had. The main courses - disaster. One friend had something in a skillet, involving croquette potatoes (clearly frozen), some vegetables and some meat. I would have thought that it would have been cooked in a metal skillet. But no, the skillet was cold and so was the food - looked pretty, though. My other friend had a steak requested to be very well done; but he did not seem to mind the slightly pink bit in the middle. His plate was cold, and his food mildly warmer. My turkey (stew?) on a bed of potato and celery mash, apart from being cool, lacked the celery, and the turkey was very far from being a stew - not a drop of liquid near it. Instead there were lots of hard little cubes of turkey ham covered in something - you could have used them as pebbles.

They did a nice cappucino, though. Speed of service was better but not so thoughtful. The prices were high compared to Sue's, and even higher compared to the quality of their offerings. Shame!