POG Howth — Restaurant in Fingal

We used to come here all the time, my toddler son likes the pancakes. Food generally still decent, but I think there has been some change in staffing or management in the last six months as generally they are inattentive and unbothered (being left sitting without menus and having to ask for them, asking several times for water, needing to ask the status of your food or drink order multiple times, waiting over half an hour on occasion for pancakes?). On the most recent occasion my toddler was going wild as we were waiting ages for our order (which has become the norm). We ordered just a plain pancake (there is an option for this is the extras part of the menu, we have always ordered it before without issue) for him as he has a small appetite and doesn't like it drowned in toppings. We usually just dip his in our own toppings. On arrival, it was a stack of pancakes drowned in Nutella and other items we didn't ask for. When I said this, the wait staff said 'this is the kids pancakes' and made us feel we couldn't send it back. It's not what we ordered but I also knew we didn't want to wait half an hour again for them to bring out the one pancake we asked for. Needless to say it didn't get eaten, my son left hungry and my husband brought him outside to cool off while I shoved my own food down my throat as fast as possible and paid the bill. Unfortunate as it was one of our...

I've been to different locations and the one in Howth is definitely the most disappointing. The pancakes are always on the dry side, there are very few fillings and even if you add extra ingredients you end up with only the top layer filled and the rest completely dry. The last time we went, one of us ordered pancakes with blueberries and bananas and they got 3 blueberries in total; peanut butter was only on top of the first pancake. I ordered pancakes with Oreo, Digestive and Kinder Bueno sauce and the filling were only on top of the first pancake, the rest of the stack was completely dry. On top of this, the staff is everything but professional: two young ladies chatting all the time about dresses and makeup instead of taking orders and when one of them came to bring the check, she did put her hands inside the cappuccino I was still going to drink (and of course, I didn't drink it anymore). Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this...

I went over the weekend and ordered the breakfast brioche with only bacon and egg, after 25 mins I asked one of the workers on the status of my brioche aswell as the other food my wife and children ordered and they said they’d check. They came back saying it’d be just a few minutes. After another 20 minutes the same worker came up to the table asking what we wanted as if we had just sat down. I explained to the worker that we had already ordered and she apologised and said she’d check on the status of our food. After another 15 minutes our food arrived with my breakfast brioche having all the toppings instead of just bacon and egg! Not to mention the place was not that busy I’m awfully confused as to what the kitchen staff were cooking as it clearly wasn’t our food. Would not recommend. Just got the feeling the staff did not care about...