Hook & Ladder Sarsfield Street — Restaurant in Limerick

If I could give this place 0 stars I would. We arrived on Friday around 11am (we're a group of three) we were waiting for 7 minutes at the door before someone even talked to us. When we were seated we were given a table by the window that only seated two, we wanted to order drinks and food so this would be incredibly awkward trying to manage, we asked for an additional chair so the waitress said she would check downstairs for a table for us. She arrived back to our table and informed us she had a table we followed her downstairs and we were greated by a chair being kicked to another table by a woman with brown hair and glasses. She then proceeded to aggressively point at the table we were meant to be seated at. We exchanged glances and sat down. We looked around and noticed that many tables on this lower level were free and we were not sure why we weren't offered one in the first place. The lady with brown hair and glasses was, no joke, running around the restaurant (I mean like a full on run it was bizarre, this woman was sprinting up the stairs and just being wayyyyy too much) and firing chairs from one table to another I'm not sure what substance she was on but God almighty I'd be the first to take some off her with the way she was flying around the restaurant. The food was mediocre at best not worth the price point. The whole event felt like an episode out of the twilight zone. Please give Julia a raise she deserves it with having to deal with the waitress with the brown hair and glasses, she was incredibly intense and my table were tempted to tell Julia to quit because working with someone like that is simply not worth it. All in all I won't be going back, the service was strange the food was mediocre and the waitress with the glasses was fighting some inner...

We were legging it out of downtown Limerick on Easter Monday - running for our lives. The punters staggering along the streets were straight out of the Thriller video - and it wasn't anywhere close to midnight. The shops were boarded up and tumbleweed blew down Main Street, murky characters leant in doorways, spitting and smoking, poverty brutally stamped on their faces. Is Limerick the town the Celtic tiger forgot?

Killaloe seemed like a better bet so I put my foot down and headed east. About 5 minutes from the centre, Hook & Ladder caught our eye. Could this really be an almond-milk-flat-white-superfood-salad type place so close to Limerick city? That's exactly what it is - and a good one too. Plenty of choice for vegetarians (except no meat-free sandwiches which was weird) but good choice of salads - the type that fill you up. All food was tasty and fresh. Most are probably vegan friendly. The coffee was good, as was the service - and the decor rustic/eclectic semi-hipster but thankfully no Edison light bulbs. Only slight complaint is that the food portions are way too big and therefore presumably there's lots of waste.

If this place was in Dublin I probably wouldn't bother reviewing it - but in Limerick it's a find and should not...

Went in at lunch time Sunday. Had a bit of a wait at the door which we didn't mind because it generally means the food is good. However, after 1 hour and 15 mins, we finally our sandwiches. I joked while we saw other customers leaving that we should just go up to a deli to get a sandwich and bring it back down and see what they say. But somehow I think the brunette waitress that was running around like a headless chicken wouldn't even have noticed. She seated us but never came back to say see if we had got our food or needed anything. 2 blonde waitress had more tact and kindly replaced our chips that came out burnt after 1 hour and 20 mins. Very interesting to watch the kitchen staff throughout this period. They were clearly arguing and under pressure. When we went to pay, the male barista asked how everything was,to which we could only snigger and say do you really want to know. We told him how poor it and how we normally go to the corbally one. He told us we should have stuck to the corbally one. The brunette waitress then decided to tell us how it was all her fault and apologised. But to be fair to her, it's not a waitresses fault if the place is ran so badly. Something seriously wrong when you see so many...