The Depot

We called and booked a table and specifically asked for a nice table by the river as we were celebrating our wedding anniversary and were told this would not be a problem. On arrival, we were shown to our ‘nice’ table, which was between a wall and the entrance desk. We mentioned that we had specifically requested a window table and were told that these are not guaranteed and everyone with bookings before us had taken up those seats – in fact, under our name on the comupter was a note saying ‘requested nice table, celebrating anniversary’. However, there was still a table of six free by the window which I am assuming must have been guaranteed for another party.

We are locals to the restaurant and have brought it a lot of business in the past but were disappointed by this attitude and inability to be flexible or follow through on a promise. All it would have taken to appease us was perhaps an apology and a round of drinks on the house. As it was, both the waitress and manager did not do more than offer apologies and nothing more, not even a substitute table that was not in such an unfortunate location.

We left and went elsewhere and will not be going back. It is a shame – I hope the restaurant is not becoming a victim of its own success. Barnes has plenty of very nice restaurants and The Depot does not have a captive clientele.

my first experience of the Depot. Lovely location. They had a trainee waitress on, on a busy Sat night. She spilt the wine to start with. Soup was badly under seasoned. Had steak & chips costing £19.50. The chips were off the shelf chips. Steak was nice. Complained but the staff did not understand what ‘oven’ chips were. Had to ask 3 times to see the manager. His english was not good. He did not seem to know what food the chef was dishing up & because I liked the steak he expected me to pay £2 towards it! He continually entered into an argument with me & thought he was doing me a favour by knocking the service charge off! Very very poor that that quality of restaurant is serving oven chips. The manager was rubbish & I could have dished up a better meal at home. Trying to complain to the owner now. I think people who visit the Depot just pay for what they get & because of lack of complaints, the restaurant has become slack & very complacent with their customer service.

Don't get back to the Depot as often as I'd like, but glad that when I do itlives up to my expectations. It's rare to find somewhere as good and yet as relaxed as this. Aside from the fact that they have one of the best locations, it's so charming in every sense and the food never, ever fails to impress. Heaven only knows what the last 2 reviewers were waffling on about, this place deserves recognition for consistency and warm hospitality. I'm one of their biggest fans.

I have used The Depot in Barnes as a local restaurant many times in the past twelve years and, after a gap of a year, took an adult family party of five including my retired parents there in for a celebratory lunch on Saturday 20 June. Unfortunately the standards of the establishment have fallen very sharply and the lunch was extremely disappointing in terms of the quality of the food which was poorly prepared and unappetising and the service which was inattentive, slow and clumsy. Regretably I will now no longer use The Depot at Barnes.

Ordered the fettucine with spinach, gorgonzola and pine nuts. No pine nuts in the dish and when I mentioned this was told the chef “had forgotten to add them”. There are only four ingredients…not too difficult is it?