Cafe Mercedes - Nicosia

I don't know what went wrong on my first visit at Cafe Mercedes. Maybe it was because I had high hopes for it, being the younger sibling of Vila Mercedes in Athens. When my friend K called to make a reservation the lady on the phone said that for our reservation of eight, there would be a minimum charge of 80Euros. We didn't mind, we actually got excited that maybe this arrangement was in place because the place was so popular.

Unfortunately I don't have many photos of the place because I wasn't intending on writing up a review, but after we left I simply had to.
From the outside, in my humble opinion, it looks like a bar with a bad name, the kind you find in the seediest of neighborhoods in the old district of Nicosia. Not a very good first impression, however I kept my hopes up.


Next, there was a guy at the door in charge for the face control. During this economic climate, when businesses in Cyprus close down in a rate of three per day, it's probably not the best time for face control, neither is the time to be too picky about who's willing to give you money.

Nevertheless, we passed through the face control as well. Finally sitting down, the ambiance was nice. The music was okay, and the interior decoration classier than what it seemed from the outside. When it was the time to order at last, I was hungry (story of my life), so I asked for the food menu. Having a look at the menu, the list of dishes was quite limited, but I thought that this was a good thing; if they have a small menu maybe they would make great food. I chose a dish with chicken in a yogurt-based marinade, while my friend C ordered a salad, and the rest just got drinks.

I would very much like to tell you how the chicken was, alas it never arrived. An hour and several reminders later I told the waitress to cancel the order. She said that the kitchen was busy, that's why they were behind. An hour's work behind? With a quick glance around I verified my suspicions; less than a dozen people were there for dinner, the rest were just for drinks. There's no excuse for such delay.

To sum up, this was the first and last time I set foot there. I can understand some delay given that it was fairly new, but there's no excuse for the kitchen not to be able to deliver food within a reasonable time to a dozen people.

The salad. The only dish which made it to our table.

Just a quick note: While my friends had their drinks and I still waited patiently for my dinner, I wondered how they would accommodate their customers in terms of space in winter, since its large size was mainly because of the large patio. Remarkably, a friend of mine replied: 'we don't know if it's going to make it till winter'.