Yesterday, one day before opening, I saw people busily setting up tables in front of the restaurant. I asked one guy who looked like a manager, when they will be open? He invited me to come the next day for lunch. I asked him for some promotion material, and he gave me the menu, which serves as a table place mat as well.

At home, I checked their social media accounts and found an offer to register with my email address to receive a special offer for the opening day tomorrow. Spontaneously, I decided to go there for lunch, if I'd get notified for that special offer.

That special offer actually came in on 10:48 a.m. the next day. It sounded pretty cool: The first three days of opening were some kind of soft opening. Guest get a discount of 50% on the first day and a discount of 25% on the second and third day. Sounds clever, isn't it?

I wanted to mention the menu of eatDOORI before we are getting into the real testing: I found a well selected choice of dishes and drinks at a moderate price. Vegetarian and vegan dishes are marked as such. Two disadvantages: There is no vegan desert and the wines are not marked vegan, as if they were. A third disadvantage could have been, eatDOORI doesn't offer any Indian beer. But I can understand very well, why they don't: I've seen delivery problems from abroad on regular basis with other Indian restaurants. So if you already know, there will be trouble ahead some day, just avoid this trouble at all! Over all: Not too many, and not too few items on the menu. Everything looks carefully planned and selected.

My starter looked pretty good: A sweet potato tikki. I wanted to wait for my drink before getting started with eating. I called for a waiter to ask a second time, where my vegan mango lassi was? Again, 5 minutes later, I was fed up with it: I stood up, approached the next server available and told her, I was waiting 15 minutes for my drink, and I decided now to cancel it. Right in this moment, another server came out and served my vegan mango lassi. I could finally start my lunch!

To be diplomatic, the sweet potato tikki was now just luke-warm. The vegan mango lassi was good. The starter was good. My temper was not so good. Meanwhile, more and more guests arrived.

Just when I had finished my starter, my main course arrived. I'd ordered a real classic. This is what I always do, when I go to a restaurant for the first time. I check the classics of their national cuisine. My experience - and many ex-colleagues see it the same way - is: Those who cannot cook their simplest and most classic dishes of their culture correctly, they cannot cook anything right. So my choice was the yellow dal, one of my absolute & all-time favourites of the Indian cuisine! With that classic dish, I ordered a small glass of German pinot gris, that was especially bottled & labeled for eatDOORI. It was a good wine, and it matched well with the dish. The yellow dal was good, but it didn't knocked me off my feet. The wine arrived shortly after the main course was served. Normally, it should be vice versa, but remembering my past experience with the vegan mango lassi, I was glad to have something to dink at all with my vegan food.

One thing, that other Indian restaurants commonly have and eatDOORI hasn't, are little candle-heated stoves to keep the dishes warm. This should prove as a disadvantage very soon! As you might have seen on the photo, there was much more dal than rice served. When I was halfway up with the dal, I ordered some more rice. 

You may guess, what was up to come: yes, I had to wait for the second of plain basmati rice for more than 5 minutes, and yes, I had to ask the server twice again. When my second finally arrived, I complained about my food has gotten almost cold, because it took too long to bring something so standard like a second helping of plain basmati rice out, which should be at hand right away in the kitchen. The just ignored my complaint and walked off after serving the rice.

After finishing my lunch, I asked for my check out, that went on quickly without any problems. The server just asked me, if the food was ok, which I admitted.

After that, I was looking for the toilet. 

When testing a restaurant for the first time, a toilet check is an absolute must! So I went inside the restaurant and looked for the toilet. There were no toilet signs in the restaurants, so I asked the staff. The entrance to the restrooms was behind to swing doors, which were not signed as entrance to the restrooms. So insider knowledge is key, if you want to pee. After entering the restroom, I was desperately looking for something to switch on the lights, until I realized, this toilet was actually designed the way it is...more like some darkroom. I was confused just to see the entrance of the ladies' room in the washing area. In a dark corner I found the entrance to the mens' room. After closing the door, I must admit, I had a problem finding the urinal. There was only a rather pale light from above. The entire restroom was designed black in black. This was the second darkest restroom, I have ever been to in my entire life! The darkest restaurant toilet, I have ever been to, was in a small bar on London's Portobello Road. I was even darker than this one, but it had an important advantage: there was a candle and a lighter on the toilet, giving you a decent orientation where to aim at. Unfortunately, at eatDOORI this is missing...yikes! This is, how I imagine the toilets on the Death Star must have been. Enter with an infra-red device only, if you are not Darth Vader! And for the sink area: Imagine you open a restaurant, and even on the first day the paper towel box is out of order. Restrooms like this have a huge advantage: You do not see, if they are clean or dirty...you just keep on hoping...

eatDOORI is a nice concept to bring Indian cuisine to a broad audience without being too much of an Indian restaurant, regarding its interior. eatDOORI prefers a more modern interior design approach, which is fine, but backfired heavily, when I look at the design of their restrooms.

As I mentioned before, I see a well-balanced restaurant concept, that basically will work well here in Germany as in other countries in their future. At this moment, there have been 5 eatDOORI restaurants opened in Germany.

In my case, the several fails of the service have the potential to ruin the reputation that restaurant before it has become wider known in Düsseldorf.  Of course, in the opening phase, some things do go wrong. But multiple fails in every phase of the service cannot be tolerated! The greatest disappointment for me was, no-one had any word of being sorry for the fails I had experienced. For your own sake, dear team at eatDOORI, you have to improve really quickly!

eatDOORI cannot keep up with the traditional Indian restaurants like the ones you find around Bahnstrasse nearby in Düsseldorf. And maybe, this is not even the goal for eatDOORI. I think, this is ok for this concept.

I originally wondered, if I'd come around with a friend of mine today. Fortunately, I didn't. I cannot recommend eatDOORI Düsseldorf  until there drastic fails have been gotten under control. I would have been so annoying to experience this with another guest or even in a business lunch setting. 

Would you please get better, eatDOORI Düsseldorf. Then I might consider coming back for a second try. And I'm begging you: please fire that guy, who designed this all-in-black restroom. Namasté.