We love to go to Cote, Cambridge, and we try to often, as we have always over the past 10 years received wonderful service and food.

Unfortunately, we don’t like to complain or write negative reviews, but earlier this evening, we arrived at Cote for 6.30pm, only to find, once the maître d' could not find us on his system, that I had inadvertently booked us a table for the wrong evening. However, he kindly found us a table and to our delight by the window, in fact a usual seat for us. So far so very good.

Regrettably, the waitress service was not as good as we have come to expect at Cote. Our waitress was very nice, took our drink and food order and asked when we would like our ‘for the table’ food brought out, prior to our starters, or with our starters. I said prior please. with a question mark, thinking that may be a problem and our waitress agreed that is what ‘for the table’ usually means.

Unfortunately after ordering our drinks and food, we had to wait sometime for the tap water and sat with no drink at all for sometime, I had to ask where it was. Then the Charcuterie Board arrived with the starters, I explained that we had asked that the Charcuterie board be separate from the starters and we were disappointed in the fact, that we guessed our starters would probably be put under a light to keep warm while we ate our charcuterie board, so we rushed this and then our starters were brought out in a timely manner, but after taking a bite of the calamari it was evident that it had been under something to keep warm as the batter was over done so crispie it was almost disintegrating as I put a fork in, at no point during the starter did the waitress ask how the meal was, otherwise I would have said something.

Our main took at least 20 mins to come out following the starters and when our waitress put the food down she did not apologise or mention the delay. The food was as it always is - lovely. The waitress did come back during us eating our mains and did ask us how it he mains were, we agreed, lovely.

We then ordered one decaf cappuccino and the Apple Tart Tatin to share. The coffee came but I had finished my coffee by the time desert came out approx. 15-20 mins later from ordering the coffee and dessert. The table next to us also complained to the waitress how long they were waiting between courses and were asked if they wanted a complimentary drink on the house. Those people also lasked us if we had to wait, and we said yes, and that this was unusual but we both agreed that the waitress should have given us a ‘heads up’ and a rough delay time, which unfortunately she did not. The whole meal took over 2 hours for just two of us,, normally we would be out within an hour and quarter. It was just unfortunate we were left wondering throughout our meal when the next course was coming. A shame really, as it did dampen the evening for us.