The food at this place is incredible and the chef is amazing, but the restaurant is let down by the service which is such a massive shame.
We booked this restaurant after reading about it online, and going by its standing on Tripadvisor and OpenTable....It was my daughter's 21st birthday so we wanted something special. A couple of weeks before, I confirmed with the restaurant that it was her birthday and that we'd like to have some champagne or Prosecco on arrival and for a fuss to be made of my daughter. This was all written on our booking confirmation (and in their booking ledger, as it turned out)
When we arrived at the restaurant for our 21.20 sitting nobody greeted us and we were left hanging by the door waiting for anybody to either book us in, acknowledge our presence, show us to table or anything. Ten minutes later we were finally met by one of the junior servers who said our table wasn't ready - quite ridiculous when the sittings are 17.00 - 19.00 or 21.20 - 00.00 - so we were asked to wait longer. Then the senior server (he wasn't a Maitre D'table) came over and got the time of our booking wrong, the name on the booking wrong and ushered us to what he said was the best table in the restaurant (it wasn't).
15 mins sitting at the table, despite many efforts of asking to order or to get drinks etc etc, we were given water. Still no champagne or Prosecco for her birthday..... Finally we were able to order drinks, and shown the menu.
As mentioned earlier, the food was amazing. We had a couple of sushi platters between five of us, and then had the beef, blackened cod, pork, a couple of seafood dishes and quite a few sides. The chef certainly knows his stuff!!!
We ordered several drinks throughout the evening - resigned to the fact that we weren't getting our welcome champagne as it had lost the effect by this time - yet none of the empty glasses were cleared at any time so we ended up putting them on the window ledge and even on neighbouring tables. When glasses were eventually cleared, the waitress dropped several glasses - clearly an accident, and can't always be helped, but with no apology to anyone she just ran away! Bizarre - she did that on a few occasions that evening.
I'm not sure if we just ate at the wrong time, having opted for the later sitting, but we felt as though we were completely overlooked for the whole evening. Such a shame, given the preparation that had gone into everything and how responsive the restaurant had been about arranging everything. Dampened the evening, for sure.
If the service and the staff were trained and overseen with a little more finesse and/or professionalism, this restaurant would undoubtedly be phenomenal but at the moment I feel that the chef and his kitchen staff are being let down by the client facing team.More