I went to the York & Albany for my annual Christmas lunch wtih 2 girlfriends. As we arrived at different times, we met in the bar and had a bottle of champagne, having told the restaurant staff we had arrived. Before we finished our bottle (a lot of which had been over poured over the table by the barman), we were told by a frosty waitress that we had to go to our table. The restaurant was by no means full and it would've been nice to have been addressed in a different manner, or alternatively, given the option to remain in the bar for a bit longer.

The service went down hill from there. We were supposed to receive some kind of pate to have with our drinks whilst perusing the menu, however this arrived with our first courses. Everything took that bit too long to arrive – we were by no means in a rush but for example, we ordered a bottle of wine to have with our food and yet our food came first and it always took such an effort to get anyone's attention. The bar manager spilt wine on our table, which we had to ask to be cleared up, we had to ask for most things again and our waitress was incredibly frosty, to the point of rude. I asked her what vegetables were available, and instead of coming back to me with the options, I had a pot of parsnips slammed down on the table when I was half way through my main meal – definitely not a vegetable I would've chosen to have with my cous cous salad & fish.

Unfortunately she thoroughly ruined our lunch and our topic of conversation became dominated by her latest behaviour. The food was excellent, but this was overshadowed by our experience there. Having mostly ignored us throughout, the staff then decided they wanted to hurry us up and slammed the bill down on our table advising us they had a table in the bar for us to move to. We asked for the service charge to be taken off the bill, but this still didn't prompt any kind of reaction. We thought we might leave a cash tip, but whilst sorting this out amongst us, another waitress came… More