Tuincafe Botanica — Restaurant in Utrecht

This place is a disgrace in terms of food and service.

Poor options of food (only pre-made cakes and VERY ordinary sandwiches), extremely expensive and with attendants that could be easily replaced by a “self service” operation.

Drinks are even worse… options of cold drinks are either soft drinks or a combination of water and industrialised/ semi industrialised syrups (5,5 for a “ice tea”).

But the “cherry on top of the pie” was an accident with the drink we ordered… it spilled all over the table when being served (again, an accident…those things happen, all fine) but:

took ages to the waitress to come back and help us cleaning / bringing napkins to dry the table when cleaning, the drink on the table was thrown on one of the guests we “could” order another drink but… WE NEEDED TO PAY FOR it the drink only came after 40 minutes, when everybody was done having lunch.

As everything is pre-paid, there is no compromise whatsoever with the service… it can take 5 or 50 minutes, problem of the customer.

Really horrible.

If you visit the botanic garden in Utrecht, bring...

We went here to wait for our excursion in the Botanical Gardens, and sat down at one of the tables eventually sent away because apparently EVERYONE at the table had to order something to be able to sit there, even though somebody already did. The staff was really unkind about it, the man who sent us away was unnecessarily harsh and the girl waiters were all laughing about it behind the bar. The woman at the reception was unkind and unnecessarily strict and blamed us angrily that the backdoor was open. Very unhappy about this experience, I would change up the staff entirely with people who actually have good experience...

The staff was extremely unprofessional and rude at times to others and my family. Instead of taking responsibility and ownership of their mistakes and shortcomings, they simply tell their clients to "relax" and "take it easy" because it's a botanical garden. If an order is missed despite being paid for, the excuse shouldn't be "things can happen." Its a shame that there are such low standards of service in such a...