Denise's Reviews

Good food, good wine, awful service.

Food: very good. Excellent smoked salmon and chicken liver pate to start, mains of haddock fish cakes and a Barnsley lamp chop resectively both great. Wine also very good. If a restaurant experience involved just the food, I'd have few complaints – great bistro food, in short.

Service: terrible. At the bar, I waited around 5 minutes whilst a bar man/waiter hovered at the other end, having a sip of his drink, before he noticed someone who had arrived after me, and serving him. Another bar man hovered in front of me, preparing a complex drink for someone, and although saw I was obviously waiting, made no attempt at communicating, no 'I'll be with you in a second' or knowing nod of the head. I gave up in the end and sat down, with no drinks. We asked to be moved to our table, still at this point with no drinks, as it would hopefully mean a chance to buy some!

At table: we were given only one food menu. I mentioned to the man who had sat us in the bar that I thought his bar staff could be a bit quicker; he muttered something in agreement, including the phrase ‘kick up the arse’. We were brought some bread – had to ask for it. The butter was hard, there were no butter knives nor side plates given to us. When I asked about this, the main man told me that it wasn't ‘that kind of place’ and that even ‘the suits’ in the week weren't given side plates. So we were meant to eat the bread over the paper tablecloth. I can appreciate that this is a laidback bistro, but when I've been to the real deal in France, or similar in Italy, spit and sawdust places, I've generally been given something other than the table to put my bread on. We were given some plates upon request, and a knife for the butter. Further flaws service-wise: waiter/waitress presence fairly non-existent for first part of meal, though this did improve as we went along. Service so disappointing that I would not go back. And the attitude of some members of staff was a little too 'that's… More

Went here on the back of some rave reviews, in March 2010.

Good things: good quality food; pleasant lunch-time atmosphere; great wine.

Not so good things:

the size of the portions was quite mean: we chose a starter of fresh anchovies. There were perhaps 4 on the plate. Yes, they were large anchovies, but anchovies are never that large, are they, so 4 of them, at a price of around £9, was a bit much. As for my main – pasta with crab – it was tasty, but it was a bit of a Spot The Crab Meat scenario as again, there was only a tiny amount of it in the dish, flaked into miniscule bits. So this meanness actually spoilt our experience, overall. And I did think it was quite penny-pinching and a little cheeky to have olives on the table when we sat down, un-asked for, and bread brought to us, and then discover at payment time that we were actually being charged £3.50 for the bread and olives. Again, this is just mean. If you're going to charge for bread and olives, let the customer know in advance, so they can eat their fill/decide that they don't want them.

Also, the owner (I presume it was, an older man dressed smartly and supervising the waitresses) did not make any effort to engage with us. Whilst I don't expect to be treated like a long-lost cousin when I visit a restaurant for the first time, I do quite like the man/owner, who is actually serving me, to make a little bit of an effort. I can't actually recall if he even uttered more than the odd, cursory word whilst bringing or collecting our plates, I certainly didn't hear him deliver anything approaching a sentence! He was very detached, and came across as a little uninterested, therefore. My sister had to ask if her wine could be changed, as there was a bit of cork in it, which can of course happen anywhere. He changed it without arguing, but equally, without hardly uttering a word when doing so, no' Oops, sorry about that' or ‘Let me change that for you, sorry about that’.

The prices are reasonable, but be careful, as… More