The Nectar House — Restaurant in Bristol

I don’t normally leave reviews but this cafe was so terrible and disappointing I wanted to write about how bad my experience was. I had some friends visiting Bristol and I wanted to show them Gloucester Road and get some brunch. We walked past the cafe and decided to go in as it was fairly busy at 1pm with a bit of atmosphere. The waiter was clearly very busy and refused to even greet us as soon as we walked in. He clearly wanted us to go away but as I was hosting friends I didn’t want to make us all leave for no reason. 5-10 minutes of standing there he eventually greeted us and sat us outside. The outside area is lovely but that was the only positive from this place. After ordering 5 dishes for 5 people, our food did not arrive for 1.5 hours. We sat and sat, starving hungry without any word from any of the waiters when the food was coming. When they served other tables, the waiter refused to look me in the eye so I could catch him about our food. I can’t remember exactly the name of the dishes we had but the avocado on toast was like guacamole from a tub. It felt like they had either run out of avocado and ran to the supermarket or this is what they serve regularly. 5 of us ordered the £3.50 orange juice which was poured into a tiny glass at room temperature, no ice, not chilled, nothing. And it was concentrated orange juice from a carton. For £3.50 and we got maybe 300ml. The crispy kale was so salty it was inedible. Nobody came to ask if everything was okay. The most disappointing part is we waited for so long for food that was actually terrible. My friends were complaining about the quality of the food and the juice and I couldn’t help but feel so embarrassed as I had taken them here. As I said, I don’t normally leave reviews but this was really one of the worst cafes I have ever been to. I understand they were busy during a Sunday lunchtime, but if they were understaffed or didn’t have the capacity to serve us in a timely manner then I would have rather they just turned us away and said sorry we’re full than make us wait for 1.5hours for...

Let me preface this by saying that my partner and I normally LOVE this place - the food and coffees are fantastic. Unfortunately, our experience today was so disappointing that we felt the need to say something.

We'd waited over half an hour for our food while people that arrived after us received theres, which prompted me to check it was actually on the way. Turns out there was a supposed error with the ticket machine. No biggie, these things happen. Since we were going to be waiting a while longer I took our empty coffee cups up the the till and wanted to order more. The brunette lady at the till thanked me, then served the person behind me. Okay, maybe she didn't realise I wanted more drinks? Nope. She then abruptly and quite rudely told me that if I was waiting to be served I needed to go to the back of the queue! I was the first person in said queue, and you even acknowledged me by thanking me for returning the mugs! The man working at the time was great and said not to charge for the coffees given that there was a mistake with our food, which the lady didn't seem happy about doing.

Eventually our food came out, and my partners toast wasn't even toasted. They brought us warm bread and butter. We ended up having to rush to eat our food and nobody even came to check everything was okay. Which, considering we'd been waiting over 45 minutes at this point, wasn't the best form.

Mistakes happen and we have no issues with that. But it's a shame to have received such rude and disinterested customer service. We were both quite shocked as usually have a fantastic experience here....

Expect kombucha, quirky mohair jumpers, man buns and staff using carabiners to juggle keys at The Nectar House.

First of all the place has decent food, and a good menu with nice coffee and juices but feel like there are a lot of places that can match the quality, it’s very standard brunch fare. The place has nice decor and I’m sure the garden would be lovely in the summer.

However really really didn’t like the service and atmosphere here. It gets busy I understand during the weekend but it felt like we weren’t being taken care of while waiting and staff were pretty cheeky asking us to move out into the cold and rain. When I was ordering staff kept interrupting me mid sentence rudely. The whole vibe was a bit pretentious hipster and lazy. I know this is Gloucester Road but it did feel a bit too much.

One of the things that bothered me about the laziness was getting stuff for the table. I don’t really understand these places that make you get all your cutlery, condiments and tap water yourself. That is meant to be done for you, especially considering it’s already a pretty small place having people crowd around a cutlery station getting in the way of wait staff transporting food seems a bit stupid during rushes. Also what’s the point of there being a bench being in the middle of the restaurant but not allowing anyone to sit on it? Remove it or use it, stop telling off customers for using their common sense.

Won’t be coming back for a while. Lots of other nice places on Gloucester Road. It’s a...