Robun — Restaurant in Bath

We booked to try this place out and came with low expectations after reading some reviews, however some of our friends recommended it, so we booked anyway.

Unfortunately our experience was pretty poor. Upon arrival we were not greeted by host or a waiter, we were just told by someone from behind the bar to just go into the restaurant, which was a bit odd, so we decided to wait by the door to be seated by someone. We waited a while before anyone would even acknowledge us and said hello, in the meantime we could see our name (full name) listed on the screen, so theoretically we could just say any name from that list.. Which is a little weird having a list showing to anyone who wants to see it by the entrance, not too discrete.. We eventually got seated and absolutely no welcome or anything, just got menus and no explanation of the menu, we had to flag someone to ask questions etc. I must add, I am not sure regarding the cleanliness of the table - it was dark to inspect it well, but our table was so sticky, my drink glasses were sticking to it, it was unpleasant experience..

It was a special occasion, so we ordered a bottle of champagne, but it didn't arrive for about 20 mins, I had to get up to ask for service and as to where our drink order was. When eventually someone came, we asked few questions, but unfortunately the server was new and didn't know anything about the food. She told us we are ordering large dishes etc. We were very hungry and ordered £42 sashimi and nigiri set as a starter and a combination of larger main dishes and small dishes as sides. The server in our opinion has messed it up and our mains arrived before the starters, with platter arriving few mins later. The food was ok, just what we would expect for the price, the black cod was nice, it all looked very good, great presentation of the food, but I personally was a little underwhelmed by the lack of advise on sizes and sides were not so great. Rice was very dry.

When it came to clearing our table, one server cleared half of it and we were left sitting with the rest of it for a while before someone else decided to finish clearing it, without even realising someone has already cleared half of it they acted as if nothing happened, just asked how was out food, to which we responded it was good, but we would like to finish our drinks, pay and go now.. During the whole time we didn't feel we were looked after at all, no one asked us how our food was during our meal, no one asked us if we wanted anything else, drinks etc. We were just left to our own devices. The bill arrived at record time, we even joked between us to say they must want us out before we complain.. We asked for the service charge to be removed as the service was awful, which was done without a hesitation. But it just felt weird no one wanted to know why we wanted it removed, there was no one paying an interest to why we complained and asked it to be removed,. it seems they don't really care and are used to removing it. It's a shame, as if the service was even half as good as Zuma or Novikov, they might have gotten away with the London prices for the food.

Not sure I would like to come back. The service...

As a general point to begin this review, I am not a picky person at restaurants I simply want to relax and have someone else cook for me for a night. I booked Robun in advance because of its recent inclusion on the Michelin guide to Bath. I was mightily disappointed here and would offer any restaurant goers my experience as a warning of how poor the service can be.

When we arrived at the restaurant we were greeted and asked if we’d like to take off our coats. I said yes of course, coming in from a cold outdoors into the warm, my coat felt like a natural thing to take off. However when I looked back at the host, they did not offer to take them or indicate where to put them so I simply hung my coat up myself. I was willing to let this slide, I’m not a precocious person I can hang up my own coat.

We then sat and chose our food and drinks and I will say I did manage to catch the eye of a waitress to note this down early into our experience. We are the type of couple who will choose off the online menu in advance and so I knew we would be faster at choosing than a regular guest.

Our meal took around 30-40 minutes to come out which is acceptable. Sushi is a craft not a race. What was baffling to me was that the drinks took just about as long. We had a beer and a sake flight. Again we let this slide, it’s a Friday night, the restaurant’s half full, water under the bridge.

The food was delicious. My salmon nigiri and tuna hosomaki was melt in the mouth and delicate. The miso soup was warming and wholesome. The spicy chicken was crisp. The only down side was my partner noted her cucumber maki was a tad dry.

When we’d finished these plates we anticipated someone would come over and ask if we wanted anything more. Everyone else in the restaurant was being served and attended to with care (albeit a few dishes being sent back or sent to the wrong tables). Nobody came. We had three plates taken away but the rest were left on our table whilst the waitresses chatted at their station and served the other tables.

I would say we wait around 30-40 minutes just to flag someone down for the bill. And when I say flag, my partner had to shout after a waitress who had served the bill to a table behind us to even get us noticed. It was extremely uncomfortable. We both began to question what we were doing wrong. Did we not order an expensive enough dish? Is it because we didn’t order all our mains at once? Is it because we were the only outwardly queer presenting couple in our section? Was sharing a kiss at our table a faux pas?

Joking aside, and I say joking but these were genuine thoughts we had when leaving, I have never felt self conscious in a restaurant and I hope to never feel it again.

We took the service charge off and left without ordering anything more. Instead we went to Tesco express and got snacks.

It may have been a bad night for the staff. The kitchen may have been slow. I don’t know but I will not be recommending Robun to...

I rarely write negative reviews but I have to do so for this restaurant to spare anyone the horrible experience we had. Please do not subject yourself to whatever level of Hell Robun is in.

My husband and I chose to go here after assuming that the negative reviews were overly fussy people who will look for any excuse to complain. We were so wrong!!

Let’s start with the service. It took 45 minutes for someone to take our order, despite us trying to flag someone down for most of that time. It was almost funny how dramatically the waiters avoided looking over at our section of the restaurant. The table next to us, seated around the same time as us, left without ordering because they got so sick of waiting. We would have done the same but they’d taken our credit card info when we booked the reservation and we were worried they would charge us the no show fee if we left.

When we finally placed our order, the waiter didn’t take our menus off the table nor did he remove our unused wine glasses. Not something I’d typically mind too much except that it was really the cherry on the cake.

As we waited for our food I realized that almost not table around us had food even though they’d been there much longer. And NOBODY looked happy to be there. I mean everybody in our section was unhappy.

So anyway we got SOME of our food after another 45 minutes of waiting. We asked to waiter for some soy sauce, which is typically on the table at sushi places, and he poured a little bit (really a very small amount) into each of our soy sauce dishes and then took the bottle!! What kind of sushi place doesn’t leave the bottle?

The sushi itself was not even worth it. The rice was cold and hard. The fish was fine but didn’t taste fresh. Also the color and texture of the tuna was sus but we ate it and did not get sick so there’s that.

The rest of our order never arrived. We asked for the bill and found out that the waiter never bothered to even ring up some of the things we asked for but there was no way we were going to bring it up and then wait who knows how long.

I have never ever asked to take off a service charge in my life because I am someone who tends to give waitstaff the benefit of the doubt. Restaurants can be busy and waiters can be overworked. However this waiter was so rude and so completely horrible that we asked to remove the service charge. To his credit he did so without fuss, and honestly seemed very...