"We used to love this place...what went wrong?"

A review of The Victoria by Stephen written on Saturday 6th of January 2007

Saturday 6th January 2007 – we met up with our friends and our young children for what we thought would be a lovely, child friendly experience with good food and service (rather like our previous experiences). Within minutes we sensed this was not going to work out as expected. Here is the litany of disasters:

1. Two glassed of Prosecco and a Coke ended up on the lap of one of our party (fair enough, accidents happen) but with only a mumbled apology from the waitress and no sign of the manageress who didn’t leave her spot behind the empty bar (more about her later)

2. We ordered our main-courses and I asked for my rib-eye medium-rare. I was told I could only have it either medium or well done as the chef was temperamental!

3. We asked for bread and olives for the hungry children. It probably took 10-15 minutes for this to arrive after repeated nagging. No apology. A baby was crying constantly next to us for lack of food.

4. I asked for mustard with my steak. Again a 10 minute wait and I was halfway through my steak before it came. No apology.

5. Our children finished first and wanted to draw at the table so one of the mothers in our party picked up some plates and moved them to an empty table next to us. This is where the manageress showed her face, tutting out loud and complaining that we shouldn’t have done that (I believe she called us rude). No-one had bothered to come and wait on the table for ages. The manageress seemed to strut about occasionally with an arrogant pout but refused to get involved in running the place.

6. The dessert menus we literally thrown at us by the waitress.

7. One of the children similarly had a teaspoon tossed onto his ice-cream side plate from across the table (at this point one of the Mums snapped). No apology from the waitress (she obviously took the example from the manageress).

All in all a really shabby service experience and totally out of touch with what people expect from a quality (and expensive) child friendly place. We been to the restaurant many times but this visit was bad enough to make it the last. Accidents happen, inefficient service sometimes happens, but plain rudeness and foul manners are inexcusable. Maybe the fact that the place was almost empty on a Saturday lunchtime is a sign that others have already voted with their feet and management should take note that whay they currently are providing is simply not up to scratch. Lets hope they get their act together, but we wont be returning to find out.

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