Fat Hippo Cardiff — Restaurant in Castle

I’m not the type of person to leave reviews, especially not bad ones. I’m an extremely awkward person and confrontation is not one of my strong suits.

Ok so this was a couple of days ago where my partner and I visited fat hippo for the first time, we’ve heard amazing things and a lot of our friends have recommended it to us. We’re a big fan of the honest burgers across the road so we’ve been reluctant to try but we thought, why not this time. We walked in and we’re seated right away. It was just gone 4pm on a weekday when we arrived so was quiet as expected. Our waiter was extremely lovely, welcomed us, complimented our choices of order, and even made a comment about how cute we were together, very friendly and inviting, gutted I didn’t get their name as they were probably the only positive from the experience. We ordered and sat as we waited for our food.

My parter and I love to cook so the main reason we go out to eat on occasion is to “people watch”. I know what you’re thinking, not like that, we just like to build backgrounds for all the people that happen to be in the restaurant at the same time as us, give them names, personalities and guess what people are talking about, it’s just something we’ve always done throughout the duration of our relationship. One of the positives of doing this is we always have an idea of how many people are in the restaurant when we arrive, and how many come in while we’re eating. There were 3 pairs of 2 in the restaurant when we arrived and a family of 6. The family of 6 were just finishing up and one of the pairs had already been served. Almost immediately after we had ordered the other 2 pairs were served. I have no idea how long they were both there so I can’t speak for their experiences.

We were waiting quite some time for our food to arrive, I think it was around 35 minutes before the starter arrived, which I thought was excessive. While we had been waiting for/ eating our started another pair had come in along with a group of 3. They were seated and their orders were taken swiftly. We finished our starter and our plate got taken away. The frickles were ok at best. EXTREMELY oily but I could see past it as someone who absolutely loves pickles. I’m one of those who just eat them from the jar. I should have expected what was to come from the amount of oil on the frickles.

The pair that came in after us got served their mains before us, which we thought was frustrating as we had been waiting around an hour at this point, but we don’t know if they got a starter which could have been a contributing factor. At around an hour and 20 minutes after we arrived we received our mains, I can’t imagine how long this would have taken on a busy day, as it was a weekday. The food arrived and my partner and I began to tuck in. My parter described his food as “overcharged and rubbery” and my burger was unlike anything I have ever seen in my life. It honestly looked as though it had been cooked and then dunked in a bowl of room temperature oil for the sake of it. It was hard, dense, I couldn’t compress the burger no matter how hard I tried, so ended up having to pick it apart to eat it, which I barely could manage. The oil had soaked into the bun leaving it soggy, so any and all structural integrity had gone out the window. The food itself wasn’t seasoned and was kind of tasteless, eating it felt like I had just drank a glass of oil. I only managed to eat about a third of the burger before I felt so ill and lethargic from the amount of oil I had consumed that I had to tap out. My partner had a bite of my food and immediately said he couldn’t eat anything else. I didn’t expect health food from a place called fat hippo, but I could feel my arteries clogging from this one meal.

The trio that had come in had received their food around the same time as us, maybe 5 minutes or so after us. A waitress came and asked them if they were enjoying their food and left.

Not once during our meal were we asked if our food was okay. Honestly was just extremely...

This place is the definition of quantity over quality, so if you are the type of person that prefers hoovering up flavourless slop over food made with flavour and seasoning then go right ahead.

We made a booking with a special request and reminded our waiter as we arrived, all we wanted was our experience to be good and made with care and without fault.

We arrived and the restaurant was basically empty which was great since we thought our orders would not need to be rushed, but would be made with care and come out in a reasonable time.

We made our order of the PB+JJ burger as we specifically wanted a sweet burger to try, and the Fat Hippo along with dirty fries, dirty tater tots and a side of cheese sauce. We also requested if we could add pickles to the Fat Hippo burger.

Our waiter assured us our order would be made perfectly and be out soon.

The PB+JJ arrived WITH NO JAM, it was literally just peanut butter, and the signature Fat Hippo burger arrived with the most tiny measly squirt of Fat Hippo sauce, it was literally the size of a £1 coin. And worst of all, they forgot to even add pickles, such a small simple request and they could not get that right.

Now lets get down the food quality, the burger patties were the school cafeteria quality, hard, dry, cardboard, no seasoning or flavour whatsoever, it was essentially a Rustlers burger patty. The "Cheese sauce" arrived with a hardened skin covering the top, and had not a hint of cheese flavour, some mystery yellow paste.

The chips were soggy beyond recognition, if you are going to make loaded fries you need to make them crispy! The tots were unseasoned, the "bacon" on the tots was a joke, what even is that??

We called the waitress over and showed her the lack of fat hippo sauce on burger, she didnt even say sorry or wait to hear our next request, just walked off and grabbed some sauce for us and left the table again without making eye contact.

We then had to call another waiter over and mentioned how we didnt get our simple pickle request and the PB+JJ had no bacon jam on it. He apologised and went to kitchen and brought back 4 slices of pickle and smoked chilli jello... no bacon jam.

At this point we just wanted to leave, we ate the few crispy chips that were served and ate the onion rings from the Fat Hippo burger. I cannot stress enough how awful these burger patties were, like genuinely the driest, deadest patties I have ever had in a restaurant.

Now the finale... I went to the bathroom before I left, and on my way back from the bathroom I caught the waitress eating fries from an order she was delivering from the kitchen whilst she was on the stairs. WHAT THE HELL???

This...

On the 06/03/2024 myself and my friend had the most incredible meal at Fat Hippo Cardiff! The slippy burger and tots were some of the best I’ve ever had and the service from Jess was so friendly and welcoming! The restaurant experience itself also turned into the most unique experience me and my friend have ever had at a restaurant! Now Towards the end of our meal as we were finishing our drinks the entire street lost power as the restaurant was plunged into darkness. It was like something you expect to happen before an alien invasion in a Hollywood movie it was crazy.

As we illuminated the restaurant with our torch lights from our phones everyone was laughing. The staff honestly were a credit to the business in how they handled it and should be commended. Jamie and Jess kept us in high spirits. As themselves the other staff and even some of the other customers cracked jokes about dining and drinking in the dark. One customer even said the burger was too good to leave so she would refuse to leave the restaurant until it was done even if it was evacuated! Now if that’s not a positive food review I don’t know what is…

We were informed by the staff that they didn’t know when the power might come back on and without it we would be unable to take payment if it was by card. They said they had heard it was 8pm but we were then kindly told that if we couldn’t wait around that the bill was on them that night. Unfortunately me and my friend couldn’t wait as we were seeing Bill Bailey (for those who are young reading this review he is a famous British comedian) I was shocked I didn’t want to walk out without paying as the food was definitely worth paying for so I asked about 3 times if it was okay and was assured that it was fine to go so we did.

So thank you Jess and Jamie for a delicious dining experience that myself and my friend will never forget. We will be back again soon I especially want to try the Swiss Tony! Hopefully next time Cardiff can hold it on the side...