Friendly staff, pleasant surroundings but the food and drink was not good at all. I had a crab salad to start which OK. For mains I had a burger. The burger itself was ok, but the chips weren't cooked properly. The tiny portion of coleslaw it came with had obviously been sat uncovered in a hot kitchen for a long time as the mayonnaise had gone translucent and rancid. My wife had linguine with truffle and heritage tomatoes. This turned out to be a bowl of linguine filled almost to the brim with vegetable oil, flavoured with harissa. The waitress was fobbed off by the chef that's what happens when you mix harissa paste and parmesan cheese. It was so greasy that it was almost impossible to pick up the pasta to eat it. Not nice at all. The pasta wasn't even home made, it was just dried pasta that you'd buy in the supermarket. If you're charging £13 for burger and chips, and £14 for a vegetarian pasta dish, you need to serve a pretty awesome burger and pretty awesome pasta dish. The burger was adequate, the pasta truly awful. The white wine wasn't properly chilled and neither was the cooler. Not good enough. The waiting staff and manager had clearly heard it all before, judging by the reaction. The wine was removed from the bill and everything else reduced by 20%. We were also given a free cheesecake, sorry to say this was also not good — very bland although the accompanying ice cream and coulis was nice!
The staff were pleasant but obviously haven't had much training as the service was decidedly casual.
Haveners need to ditch the z list celebrity endorsement and concentrate on getting the basics right. Lovely building, just need to sort the kitchen out and produce food that matches the expectations set by the building and price list.
I had a crab salad to start which OK. For mains I had a burger. The burger itself was ok, but the chips weren't cooked properly. The tiny portion of coleslaw it came with had obviously been sat uncovered in a hot kitchen for a long time as the mayonnaise had gone translucent and rancid.
My wife had linguine with truffle and heritage tomatoes. This turned out to be a bowl of linguine filled almost to the brim with vegetable oil, flavoured with harissa. The waitress was fobbed off by the chef that's what happens when you mix harissa paste and parmesan cheese. It was so greasy that it was almost impossible to pick up the pasta to eat it. Not nice at all. The pasta wasn't even home made, it was just dried pasta that you'd buy in the supermarket.
If you're charging £13 for burger and chips, and £14 for a vegetarian pasta dish, you need to serve a pretty awesome burger and pretty awesome pasta dish. The burger was adequate, the pasta truly awful.
The white wine wasn't properly chilled and neither was the cooler. Not good enough.
The waiting staff and manager had clearly heard it all before, judging by the reaction. The wine was removed from the bill and everything else reduced by 20%. We were also given a free cheesecake, sorry to say this was also not good — very bland although the accompanying ice cream and coulis was nice! The staff were pleasant but obviously haven't had much training as the service was decidedly casual. Haveners need to ditch the z list celebrity endorsement and concentrate on getting the basics right. Lovely building, just need to sort the kitchen out and produce food that matches the expectations set by the building and price list.