The Horn

What a memorable experience at this restaurant…for all the wrong reasons! Arrived at 8:30pm for a birthday dinner reservation. On arrival, the staff member who greeted us (an older male wearing no shoes) said to us the kitchen is “under the pump at the moment”. We placed our order within 2 minutes of being seated (we already knew what we wanted before arriving - the set menu) and his response was “well…everyone else has already ordered so you guys will be last”. He just stood there hesitating as if he was considering not taking our order. Extremely awkward as a customer as we didn’t know how to respond…if your restaurant takes bookings for 8:30pm then you shouldn’t be making the customer feel bad for ordering food when they arrive! We then waited over an hour for the starters, which were essentially samosas (one each). The menu said they came with sauce but there was none on the plate. Other than that they tasted like a standard supermarket samosa. Onto the main, which arrived after another 1 hour of waiting. This was a combination of different stews served with injera. Some tasted quite nice, others were average. Certainly the only saving grace of the evening was the goat stew. We had to ask several times for napkins and also ended up putting our used glasses on neighbouring (empty) tables because our table did not get cleared in between courses and there was no room anywhere. Last up was dessert, which we regrettably waited over another hour for. After about 45 minutes of waiting, the older male with no shoes came up to us and said “alright well you were the last ones in and you’ll be the last ones out, we need to pack up now”….we let him know that we were actually still waiting for our dessert and he obviously had no idea despite being the one who A: took our order and B: was bringing out all our food. Again, this was incredibly awkward as a customer being told to leave when we were still waiting for our food. Dessert came out and they were the blandest “donuts” I’ve ever tasted. Essentially deep fried batter with no flavouring and some home brand vanilla ice cream on the side. Initially we thought the food was just taking a while as we had arrived at the end of the dinner rush and the kitchen was busy, but by dessert we were the only people left in the restaurant…and our bland batter still took over an hour to arrive. Over 3 hours to have one of the most average meals ever, being made to feel like a burden from the onset. Could not recommend this place any less.

Not sure what happened tonight (the server did say there was some 'incident' in the kitchen) but this was hands down the worst food I've ever had in Melbourne. Injera was stale. Food had no taste. If I'd closed my eyes, I couldn't tell what I was eating. Kind of criminal to be serving food of such low quality to anyone and then charging fairly steep prices considering there are incredible Ethiopian restaurants not too far away in Footscray. I'm even willing to look past the Tibetan flags (lol) and a jazz band comprised of white men playing really loudly. Just give us decent food but nope. Never going there again. Absolutely terrible.