Daphne Restaurant — Restaurant in Cheltenham

If I could give zero stars I would. This is most certainly up there in my "worse experiences". I'm very surprised with all the good reviews but perhaps I had the off day on a Friday night? 🤷🏻‍♂️

I turn up with 5 other friends and was seated promptly, probably the only good thing. However this is where it all goes down hill. It took the waiter 20mins to take our order for drinks even though we said we're ready to order food, the waiter said he'll come back with the drinks and then take my order for food, which I feel he was buying time for the kitchen to catch up with the cooking as I saw a fair number of tables waiting for their food.

The drinks arrive in about 5mins or so and the waiter took our order. In every Turkish restaurant I've been, they've ALWAYS served bread with some sort of a dip whether it's hummus or tzatziki. Funnily enough, they had no such thing on the menu.

In any case, the starters arrived approx 30mins later from ordering and it came with no bread and you had to order it separately. The portions were small and the dolmades (vine leaves parcels) were horrendously tasteless. No seasoning what so ever and all you can taste was Oliver oil. I'm not over exaggerating but even the tin ones taste better, no lie! What's worse is that the waiter told me the vine leaves were quite big individually. But turns out it's smaller than my index finger. Even the Greeks on the table were disgusted with the taste.

The other starters were okay, but would've been good if it came with bread rather than having to order. The olives taste like they were from tin and was under the impression Mediterranean Olives are normally big juicy ones.

After finishing the starters we were left hanging for another 30mins before all the mains were brought to the table. Fair number of people orders chicken shish, mixed grill and a veggie kebab.

Firstly, the shish and grill were overly salted. All of my friends had the same comment. The chips were literally a small stack of 8 chips. They were a bit on the oily side as if the oil they fried it in wasn't hot enough. Thus, the potato soaked up the oil.

Secondly, my veggie dish came last and came across a spag bowl without the pasta. It had cut up aubergine, onions, potato and other variety of veg mixed into a tomato based sauce. I feel like it was lacking some sort of rice or couscous. Again, after quarter way in, it felt salty.

Lastly, when I asked for the bill and told the waiter the food was overly salty and was disappointed with the service taking over an hour, rather than getting being apologetic, he told me they were busy all day and only had one chef in the kitchen. Was the waiter looking for sympathy? This shouldn't be a problem of the customers. If you knew you were under staff, you should've advised the customers waiting time may take longer than usual. Instead you make your customers sit there like an idiot and wait. I even spoke to a few tables and even they had a poor experience. Not to mention the overly priced menu for something that isn't cooked properly and portioned well.

I really hope this negative review gets read and future customers are more cautious and not like me falling for the old reviews saying how...

No idea how this restaurant has received so many positive reviews. Came here on a Friday night with a party of 6 for dinner and was left standing at the entrance of the restaurant for a couple minutes before being shown to our table. No complimentary bread and olives, no jug of water for the table, nothing. Once seated, it pretty much felt like we were ignored for the next 15 minutes.

Eventually, our drinks order was taken, despite us being ready to order food. Then, another 20 minutes passed and we were given drinks and FINALLY allowed to order (almost 40 mins had passed by this point).

20 minutes later, we received our starters which was 2 aubergine dishes and some olives, which was supposed to be served with bread, but what did we get? Olives with 3 small pieces of bread. Now between 6 people, this felt like an insult, not to mention the 2 aubergine starters were gravy based and didn't even come served with bread either. Anyways, I had to explicitly ask the waiter for a basket of bread which came and despite not being warmed up, the bread was decent.

By this point, I was already getting annoyed because of the outrageously slow service. As such, I decided to stopwatch the amount of time taken to receive our order (2x mixed grills, 3 chicken shishes and a vegan main). Once the order was placed, stopwatch was started and 1 HOUR AND 3 MINUTES LATER, we finally received our mains. Whilst the starters were okay, the mains were poor. We all agreed that our plates had way too much salt added. When we told the waiter the food was salty, he just mumbled something then mentioned nothing more about it.

We weren't the only ones in the restaurant fed up with the service, the couple to our side were equally fed up as they were sitting waiting ages to pay the bill. They joked with us that we should order a pizza whilst waiting for our food.

Now, I'd like to think this was a one off incident (perhaps staff where off-sick?) as it appeared there was one waiter and one chef, but after we questioned the waiter on this, he said this level of service was normal for them on a Friday night. Now I'm no restaurant owner but common sense would tell me you need to have a couple more staff members, especially on a Friday night?!

Abysmal experience.

Starters: 2/5 Mains:...

Reviewed by the wife and friends…

Shocked to see so many positive reviews having had a fairly poor experience. On arrival, we found the restaurant to be almost empty on a Friday night which immediately raised suspicion. The staff were somewhat unorganised and extra keen to take orders before the full party had arrived.

We ordered calamari for starters which came out resembling something somewhat more like a squid omelette. The prawns were very small and not particularly flavoursome.

When the mains arrived, they were equally unimpressive, small portions and a very sad looking salad. A side of fries was ordered which arrived undercooked. To point out that the main courses were priced at around £15-£20, so not reflective of great value for money.

As for desserts, the less said about those the better - Let’s allow the images to speak for themselves.

Overall, a rather underwhelming experience having set a level expectation from online reviews. We had not expected fine dining. However, as a group of three spending over £100 there was no excuse for small portions and below average food quality. We won't be returning...