Dickens Bar and Restaurant, Dostyk 46, Almaty

Almaty, May 19 2014, ca. 9 p.m. local time. I did not ask for much: olives, bread, dry red wine, grilled dorada, and Napoleon cake and green tea for dessert. The service was hopelessly slow, although they did not have more than half a dozen clients in the entire establishment, I could see 3, myself included. Dorada was probably prepared from frozen fish and was served half-raw: I guess they failed to defrost it properly in the microwave. It was not fresh either, as betrayed by the rancid smell of the fish fat. Olives came straight from the can, and were not exciting in any way. Three out of four varieties of bread were stale, the fourth was reasonable but not even good. The Torre del Cura Tempranillo dry red they were serving by glass was probably opened quite a while ago. The Napoleon cake was good and fresh, but the doze would have easily served 3 persons instead of just one. The green tea was good. This abominable cooking and terrible service at Dickens cost me some 20% more than I had paid for a similar meal in a very nice Italian restaurant in Franfurt by the Holiday Inn Express Airport Hotel two nights before ... By the way, non-smokers better keep out altogether: although they do have a non-smoking zone, their ventilation does not work, thus is gets as smoky as the smoker's zone!