Its with a heavy heart that i write this review, like the other low reviews for this restaurant on this site I was duped into coming here by a 'working girl' that doesn't actually do the 'work' that one thinks. Her job was to bring foreign guys she lured... Display completely...to Kiev to this place in order to earn money on their meals.
GUYS, IF YOU ARE MEETING GIRLS ON TINDER THEY ARE MORE THAN LIKELY OUT TO SCAM YOU, DONT WASTE YOUR TIME.
The Actual pricing of this restaurant is all over the web, the problem is that unless you search for the place in RUSSIAN you will never see the actual menu pricing. I found the menu pricing after a quick search and learned that i was charged between 40-65% more with the special foreigner menu. You wont know its a special menu as it looks just like any other menu when you go to a place.
The food while good (not Michelin Star by any means) had tiny portions and exorbitant pricing. I was for example charged 665 UAH or about 30 USD for a tom yang soup which if you look at the russian menu pricing is only 390 UAH. The story continues for all the menu items including 130 UAH for a latte and they even embellished the bill from the same menu i looked at for a glass of prosecco, it was 240 UAH on the menu i was looking at and i was charged 340 UAH when the bill came. They even tack on a service fee of 15% just to rub salt into the wound.
Just like other stories (if you google KIEV GIRL RESTAURANT SCAM) the person whom brought me there disappeared right when the bill was about to come to freshen up and once i paid the bill she magically re-appeared. How it works is that these girls are given debit cards for around 40% of the total bill for bringing the unsuspecting foreigner to their restaurant to eat.
The crux of the matter and why im writing this review is that we were actually hitting it off but it was all ruse. Fortunately for me, i wisened up to this when she asked to take me to an even more expensive place the next night claiming that the views were incredible, our date was to be at 3pm which during the winter is right around the time the sun goes down in kiev, so im not sure what type of magical views i was supposed to see at this time.
I contacted the place on facebook in order to get their menu, i wrote in english and while my question was seen, it was of course ignored. IMAGE ATTACHED.
While i was at this place, the restaurant was empty except for 1 american in his 30s, one britsh guy in his 50s and another what looked like asian guy around the same age. they were all sporting women from kiev.
Please dont get me wrong, the table service was great, not surprising as the restaurant as i mentioned was empty however the portion sizes were laughable and while my soup and sald was around 500 UAH, [censured]te' ordered the tom yang and a pasta dish which rang in at over 1200 UAH. Logical as shes paid on percent of the total bill. Ironically she complained to me the soup she ordered was too spicy even though she had mentioned to the waiter that she didnt like spicy food and didnt even eat her soup but did polish off the fist sized portion of pasta.
A typical good restaurant in kiev should set you back around 600 UAH for two people, even for a higher end place maybe this increases to a couple hundred UAH more but definitely not anywhere in the 3000 UAH mark.
https://www.tripadvisor.se/ShowUserReviews-g294474-d5566954-r731953144-Sanpaolo_Restaurant-Kiev.html#
