The Doyen — Restaurant in Belfast

It's with a heavy heart that I write this review. The bar itself and the bar staff are great. It's highly apparent that the chef and waiting staff really don't want to be there. We were staying close by so it was an easy location to meet our old friends. We had a meal on Friday night and were served by a very pissed off waitress who didn't smile once. She even came passed at one point to ask if the food was OK but didn't wait to hear our answer. My family said their food was just OK but mine was dreadful. I had ordered a pasta dish which seemed to have an interesting sauce with Prawns. When it came 5 minutes after ordering 🤦 the sauce was really bland and I have no idea about the age of the prawns. It came with a Roasted Garlic Ciabatta (at least that what the menu said) It was a very luke warm slab of bread with unmelted garlic and parsley butter spread all over it. There were several billing issues. I asked for the manager to discuss the bill. She said they were very busy (but they managed to bring a microwaved meal to us in 5 minutes!) She did sort the bill out but seemed utterly pissed off with us. We were back on Sunday afternoon to meet friends. Stupidly I suggested that we got Sunday dinner there (I said surely they can't screw up a Sunday Dinner 🤷) We all ordered Roast Beef Dinners that were supposed to come with Yorkshire Puddings. Waitress dumped our food in front of us and went to get cutlery. On her return, I asked her were the Yorkshire Puddings coming? She scowled at me and said they had run out. The food was OK but covered in very salty gravy. Pub is good but don't get any food. The food side of it needs a proper manager that cares about customers and...

The Doyen will see this review coming I'd have thought. A table of 3 ordered mains only and 1hr 5 mins after ordering nothing came. The waitress said she didn't know what had happened, then the manager (presumably) apologised. 1hr 15 mins after placing our order, two correct and one incorrect dishes arrived. Almost 1hr and 30 mins after ordering came the third correct dish by which time the original two had finished. They gave us an extra dessert that we didn't ask for (two when we ordered one) and took the third dish off the bill (rightly so), but refused to make a gesture against the first two dishes. We explained politely when going to pay for the bill that we felt that wasn't good enough: had all three correct dishes arrived 1hr 15 mins after we'd ordered, we'd have expected some sort of gesture for all three. It seems the bigger and later mess outshone the still-quite-poor-but-occuring-much-earlier mess. Also receiving two desserts when you asked for one is nice, but not compensation for a delay of almost 90 minutes - I'd have preferred the £6 from the dessert off the first two dishes instead. I'd suggest making a gesture against something a customer did order, in our case even the wine. As my friend said, 'you mightn't have minded if the food was deadly'....

Went for Easter Dinner with the family and the rest of them had a nice time, with a good selection of roasts on offer for them! Service was also very good given that it was a busy holiday. However, veggie options were very limited and clearly a basic afterthought! No vegan starters or desserts, and the only vegan main was a risotto that I found quite flavourless, though the chestnuts in it were a nice addition. Settled for vegetarian options for starter and dessert as everyone else in our group was having three courses, and, to be fair; they were nice (goats cheese salad, and Sticky toffee pudding), but the mains were unfortunately either a risotto or a tomato pasta, the stereotype of bad vegetarian menus everywhere.

For the same price as a roast dinner on a set menu, I would have loved a vegetarian roast as an option: portobello mushroom, a nut roast, or even just some roasted veggies...