Dar el Jeld Hôtel & Spa in Tunis

I am profoundly perplexed by the high mark this restaurant receives. Apart from the amazing dining room in an old converted palace, everything else is decidedly ordinary. Yes they do welcome you on arrival and make you sit in the front lounge but do not have the finesse to offer you the menu to ponder over whilst waiting, let alone a small nibble to whet your appetite. Once you are sat at the table and given the menu, a miserable looking older man comes around to take your orders with not a sliver of a smile or acknowledgment. Shockingly, the menu is very limited and reminiscent of a fixed priced pre-theatre tourist menu hence you can forget indulging yourself in any kind of feasting. And if that failed to disappoint you, you can then rest assure that the food will taste no different from any other Tunisian restaurants charging half the price. This was our sixth Tunisian restaurant at this point. In fact my fish soup was so tasteless and so was the fish couscous, I had never been so happy to see a salt cruet. Even the wine list fails to include any non-Tunisian wines which is almost a crime for a supposedly upmarket restaurant. All in all, this is a very bog standard Tunisian restaurant that happened to be in a nice room. More hype than substance. You will not eat any better here just because they have pretty mosaics and lamps. Not recommended unless you really don’t know what to do with your money.