Hi all, i'm back and i'll be r/r/c-ing those i owe and much more. Please return the favour
Hi all, i'm back and i'll be r/r/c-ing those i owe and much more. Please return the favour
Member since:06.11.2007
Reviews:20
Members who trust:10
I recently wrote a review on Demuths (a vegetarian restaurant) which i rated as excellent. Unfortunately i cannot say the same for this particular experience. We went to Demuths the day before and were looking for a similarly small interesting restaurant - we were so disappointed.
I cannot comment on the quality of food as everything else was so bad that we left before we ordered, so this is not a comprehensive review, however we were just so offended by this restaurant that I wanted to let you all know (well those of you that are interested!)
LOCATION This restaurant is in a good location situated near to the Abbey, so it's central and down a lovely little "bistro alleyway". This restaurant has a particularly late sitting and is open to 11pm, an hour later than most other restaurants in this area. We were drawn in by it's speciality dish of the day (a seabass panfried in butter sauce) and the fact that from the outside it looked quaint and friendly.
OUR RECEPTION We entered, walked up the small hallway and into what was essentially the living room of a house. This is not unusual for restaurants down this alley as they are essentially converted houses - the difference here is that tis restaurant still looked like someones living room. We approached the bar area (a faux leathercorner unit) where the man grunted at us to wait and then asked us what we wanted. Nice. We politely asked for a table for 2 and he prised himself from behind the bar and went down stairs without saying a word. Perhaps we were supposed to follow him? Who can say, but we took the initiative and did so anyway. We were shown downstairs into a darkened room surrounded by porcelain frogs - i live in hope that this was not a poor and rather offensive reference to the french bistro it was supposed to be.
We were given our menus and my boyfriend asked whether the seabass was still on the menu and it was only after several seconds as he was walking away that the waiter chose to grunt a simple "no" in our general direction.
THE MENU The menu is extensive and the restaurant offers a choice of small, medium and large dishes. However despite there being many items on the menu, the dishes are only minor variants of one another. At this stage, you are probably aware that i am a little biased against this restaurant due to our chilly reception, so please have a look at the menu yourselves which is displayed outside the restaurant.
THE PRICE The pricing is similar to all the other restaurants in the area, approximately £6 - £9 for a starter or small dish going up to £15-£17 for a main or a large dish. Unfortunately i cannot remember the price of desserts.
LEAVING - YAY! We decided that we were not happy with the service or the atmosphere and the staff were increasingly rude as they slammed down our wine classed and spilt brown sugar over our place mats as they took the bowls away, so we got up to leave. We passed the man who received us so warmly (ha) and politely informed him that we had decided to leave. He grunted at us, told us we would not be welcomed back (were we welcomed in the first place? I think not) and the restaurant closed at 10 with the last sitting being much earlier than that (despite signs saying it closed at 11). You'd have to threaten o gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon to make me even consider coming back to Tilleys!
THE FOOD I cannot comment on the quality of the food, but i think even if the food had been superb, the atmosphere and harsh reception would have ruined it. I'm so glad we decided to leave and am sorry to have wasted 20 mins in this place when we could have been in the lovely restaurant we ended up in.
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