Chicago Rock Cafe (London)

...had often visited our local Chicago Rock Café for the odd evening out (and some of them were very odd believe me!!) so I thought that it would be nice to go there for my party. We had such a good time when we were there to dance and I naturally assumed that we would have an excellent meal there as well….WRONG!!

On telephoning the restaurant 6 weeks before we wanted to go we were told that the extensive menu was “wonderful” ...
...they would have no problem in accommodating up to 30 people and that the only thing I needed to do was to get a small deposit from each person along with their menu choice to the restaurant 4 weeks before the date of the party.

No problem. They sent me copies of the menu and it did indeed sound wonderful. It consisted of the usual type of things you would expect to get in this kind of diner, with fancy names, but yes we all agreed ... more

Ok you know by now that I have a thing about good service, as one or two of my previous ops have shown. Hold tight! I am now about to redress the balance by telling you all about some appalling service I received last year.

It was my leaving do from my previous job and I so wanted it to be the leaving do to end all leaving dos’ it was, but for the opposite reasons I had hoped for! As a group we had often visited our local Chicago Rock Café for the odd evening out (and some of them were very odd believe me!!) so I thought that it would be nice to go there for my party. We had such a good time when we were there to dance and I naturally assumed that we would have an excellent meal there as well….WRONG!!

On telephoning the restaurant 6 weeks before we wanted to go we were told that the extensive menu was “wonderful” (those were the exact words..) . I was assured that they would have no problem in accommodating up to 30 people and that the only thing I needed to do was to get a small deposit from each person along with their menu choice to the restaurant 4 weeks before the date of the party.

No problem. They sent me copies of the menu and it did indeed sound wonderful. It consisted of the usual type of things you would expect to get in this kind of diner, with fancy names, but yes we all agreed it sounded perfect. So all menu choices chosen and all deposits secured I toddled off to the restaurant exactly 4 weeks beforehand to hand the above in.

The actual day came and we all met up at the restaurant, myself having rung the day before just to ensure all was ok. Then the time came for us to all be seated, altogether on a long table which was beautifully laid out I have to say. We waited to be served, and waited, and waited…Then along came some of the starters that had been ordered. Tortilla chips with assorted dips to share. This is when it all started to go disappointingly downhill.

The Tortilla chips were tasteless and of the consistency of cardboard, stale was the polite way to describe them. Other starters ordered were soup, which I was told was edible, and Caesar salad, actually arrived at the table over an hour after the first starters had been served. A friend refused to pay for her salad as she had to wait so long. The young waitress did apologise saying that there were problems in the kitchen (not very inspiring…)

When it came to the main course it actually got worse. The smokey cooked chicken was solid with what appeared to be pieces of bacon welded to it. The pasta meals were lukewarm, and the steak couldn’t even be cut with a steak knife. The fries I had chosen with my meal were disgusting. They were so obvious the cheapest ones that could be purchased frozen, slung into a deep fat fryer and then piled on a plate. They were full of “eyes” and badly cooked. I would NEVER have served anything like that up to anyone I had been cooking for.

We had made it quite clear to the waitresses, one of whom was a trainee, that we were very unhappy with the service, and she apologised once again saying that they were short staffed. “Yes, we said "and so are we often at work, but we would give better service than this, even if we had to work twice as hard” I felt sorry for her as she was getting the brunt of our disappointment, and increasing anger for what appeared to be a distinct lack of organisation at a higher level.

By this time the majority of us had given up on our food, it really was that inedible, and who wants to be making a start on their main course while some members of the party have barely finished (those that did finish) their starters? My close friend could see that I was very upset and demanded to see the manager. A lad not looking more than 12 years of age appeared, OK I know that is a bit unfair but if he had known what he was doing then I would have forgiven him for looking so young!

Carol stated our case quite clearly, moaning about the appalling service and the disgusting food, I really am NOT exaggerating here. She added that they had had 4 weeks to prepare for this, it wasn’t as if we had piled in off the street en masse, and wanted meals for 30 people. The restaurant was not busy, at the time we were sitting down there was only one other couple waiting for food. He listened but appeared not to offer any real help.

My friend then told him that it was supposed to be a very special day for a very special person (I have good friends, who are great liars!) and that the whole evening had been ruined and what was he going to do about it? He “ummed” and “ahhed” for a while and then said he would see what he could do. He came back a while later and offered us the meal at a reduced rate. Carol agreed to this adding that she thought he should throw a round of free drinks in too. I have never seen so many friends suddenly decide that they liked the taste of alcohol!! By the bottle full!! Pity we couldn't swing that!!

We declined dessert. We had sat down for the meal at 7.30pm and it was now almost 11.00pm and we wanted to do a bit of bopping! So really we didn’t even get the meal much cheaper as we hadn’t had dessert. I am pleased to say that the rest of the evening went off very well and we stayed at Chicagos to “party”.

A few days later I decided that I would write a letter of complaint to the Manager of the branch in the hope that it would encourage them to develop and improve their customer care skills so that this never happened again. I didn’t expect to get much of a reply seeing as we had to kick up such a stink to get any consolation from them on the night but I did receive a letter back from him.

It was hand written and basically it apologised profusely for what had occurred that night, along with 2 vouchers for free meals for myself and 3 friends to be used whenever we wanted!

Guess who never used them???

My overall opinion of Chicagos is that they are great places to go dancing, but as for eating there, don’t bother. If you read the other opinion on a different branch you will see that the writer had a similar problem with poor service. What a shame as I reckon they could be little gold mines on the meal thing if they tried a lot harder. Thank you for reading this LONG!!!! Op!

 

...less