"Ate here on Saturday evening as a treat with a friend. Beautiful room, lovely ambience, warm and professional welcome. But after that it went downhill. The service was awkward and strange. I assumed it was our waiter’s first week as he was intrusive, a bit clumsy and tentative but in fact he was the person in charge. I don’t like a rushed meal but the first course took 30 mins to arrive which was a little long to wait. Starters when they arrived were delicious. My main course was very odd though. I ordered baked cheese with salami and potatoes costing £26. When it arrived it was a large ‘sharing’ type cheese with Parma ham and a small amount of sautéed potatoes plus lots of good bread. Obviously I chose it and you could say that was my bad but I assumed as it was a main course option it would have been prepared in a different way suitable for one person. It was delicious but I thought it was an ill judged and peculiar dish to be offered as a main course- it would have been a substantial and lovely sharing dish for 4 people as a starter. I was also surprised to find Parma ham rather than the salami. I adore cheese and have a good appetite but even I was defeated and only managed to eat about 1/3 of it. I mentioned this pleasantly to the waiter when he came to collect our plates and also mentioned about the substituted Parma ham. He said he would mention it to the manager. The first waiter came over saying ‘you’ve got a complaint I hear?’. I said ‘no it’s just an observation’. He told me that the Parma ham WAS salami. I was a bit perplexed as the two meats are not similar at all and we entered into a faintly Trumpian discussion which I quickly gave up on as he was not to be moved on this ‘black is white’ issue. He then proceeded to take my carafe of white wine away although there was still some wine left in it. I had had two glasses anyway so didn’t bother calling him back but again I thought this was very peculiar and bad service. My friend had pheasant macaroni which she said was tasty but definitely not pheasant but after the salami/ham saga we didn’t bother saying anything about that. I ordered an Americano coffee which came quickly with sugar but no milk. When I asked him for milk he raised his eyebrows said ‘milk?’ incredulously as though I’d asked for something really outlandish and reluctantly supplied it. We had one dessert which was a ridiculously huge portion but delicious. The bill came with a 12.5% tip added. We declined to pay this, the waiter queried it, had to go off to the manager again and give us a new amended bill after a bit of faffing around- an awful palaver over a so called discretionary service charge. My friend gently explained that we had not had a great experience and why and this was noted with not so much as a grudging acknowledgement; let alone an apology. I have never had such crack handed and odd service and we both left feeling very let down. It really spoiled what would have been a lovely evening otherwise. I wouldn’t have minded about the weird main course if they had handled it with a little more grace. A simple acknowledgement and comment about ‘sorry it wasn’t what you were expecting... will feedback etc’ would have gone a long way. I am not a high maintenance customer. I respect and admire restaurant staff who generally do a tough job with great professionalism. But this was not a cheap restaurant and we felt overall it was not good value and we did not have the relaxed and lovely evening we were expecting."
