Boardwalk Beach Club — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

'Live the dream' at Boardwalk Beach Club? Only if your dreams involve substandard coffee, confused and confusing service, and distinctly average Costco food at vastly inflated prices.

Called in yesterday for Mother's Day coffee and cakes, and left nearly £32 lighter! We had 2 Costco traybakes, a Costco muffin, a toastie (looked like a pre-made Costco job too), 2 kids apple juice (200ml Costco cartons @ £2.50 each!) and two £3 single espressos (because we were told that they could apparently only make black or white coffee...). Initially I was charged £20, which I thought was at the upper end of reasonable, before the waiter came back to say they had forgotten to add a Costco chocolate muffin and a ham and cheese toastie to the bill, and I had to pay another £12! Our waiter was a friendly guy, and was embarrassed when I asked to see an itemised receipt and sheepishly said, 'sorry, this place is expensive, man'.

I felt terrible for the staff - all young teenagers from the looks of it - who were woefully undertrained and seemed to have no clear information available to them. Meanwhile, the owner (I assume) seemed more interested in loafing around listening to and taking photos of the live music than supporting his team (despite them being 'too busy' to steam milk for any 'speciality coffees'). Perhaps he could have nipped into the toilets and given them a bit of a much-needed clean up and refresh of paper towels etc instead...?

By the time the cakes arrived, the coffee was cold. The cakes themselves were fine, but the cynical markup made them hard to enjoy (£4.40 for a Costco muffin!?).

I don't make a habit of writing reviews - especially not bad ones - but their social media has so much chest beating nonsense about how great the cafe is and listing the awards and plaudits they have won, that I thought it important to warn potential visitors of the reality. Notably the last award they won was in 2018 - and the place has clearly gone significantly downhill in the intervening half decade.

Looking at other reviews, there is a clear pattern of defensive responses from the owner, who seems to brand any bad review as 'trolling' and dismiss them out of hand as a malicious attempt to smear his business with misinformation. Well, I can guarantee you that this is an honest and unbiased review and any attempt to discredit it should be seen in that context.

My advice would be to take the negative reviews on board and build the cafe back to what it was when it was winning awards. As it stands, the 'dream' that Boardwalk Beach Club offers is one that I was happy to wake up from...

Edit: it is telling that the owner has a copy and paste response for negative reviews. Fair enough - it would be impossible to get anything else done if he were to respond individually to ea h of the vast number of poor reviews...

Visited today after travelling to do Parkrun, first impressions was why are we ordering over a barrier ?? .. asked what breakfast options there were to be told “ cheese and ham toasties or a breakfast muffin? We opted for the breakfast muffin which was a sausage cut in half with a tiny bit of streaky bacon with what I can only describe as tomato paste spread on the muffin. Our drinks( two coffees and a tea) didn’t arrive so we asked one of the servers, who brought two drinks over, where’s the other coffee we asked “it’s being made” we were told, ten minutes later still no third coffee, so again we asked to be told “it’s on its way” after eventually arriving we noticed the people behind us had crisps with their “breakfast” muffin .. why didn’t we get crisps we all said together, so again we made a bee line for the barrier that doubles up as counter to ask for an explanation, were these VIP muffins? .. this time we met the owner, who told us we must have ordered takeaways, despite being giver a table number .. we disputed this and again he apologised and said it was a genuine mistake but made no attempt to listen to what we were saying. We certainly won’t be back, the muffin was shockingly bad, the service appalling, and the owners attitude disgusting. I read some of the bad reviews before going and most of them were being blamed on trolls, I am not a troll, I was a real disappointed customer, at one point the owner came out and started shouting over the music that a 93 year old accordion player and 12 saxophones were coming to his place over the weekend, perhaps he should get the basics right, like good service, decent food and improve his manner before telling us about the entertainment that was coming. We were £25 for 3 pathetic muffins, two coffees and a...

Exorbitantly expensive. We went there two summers ago and bought 2 magnums for £9.50. Today we bought two bacon rolls and two coffees which was £18.80. We should have learnt from the Magnum experience. It's fine though there is nothing special about it but the price would mean we will never return. Frankly it's unjustifiable.

5th December 2020 update.

I have moved my review from one star to three, largely because the owner replied and was expansive - both are all too rare. His / her points were valid in their own right - so to be both acknowledged and accepted - and imply I could have moderated my tone. I'm happy to stand by my original comments, though perhaps not as harsh.

The owner advises of menu, staffing, market position, quality - all of which lead to the pricing structure - I don't doubt them.

There are two separate mentions of being attacked by trolls. I am unsure if this is an insinuation that I am one - I don't assume so, though it seems to be inferred. If so, I dispute it, given that I have my name here.

It is mentioned that I "hate" them. I never said I did. I said we wouldn't return based solely on what is, to us, an unjustifiable price. The two are hardly to be conflated.

I take the point about quality products - again, I have no reason to dispute it. However, that doesn't make me move my opinion on my core point. I fail to see how, no matter what quality the ingredients, nearly £20 can be deemed justifiable for two bacon rolls and coffee. I make no direct quality-based connection, but given the price that these items - often just as large - can be bought from multiple other outlets for a very much lower price, I have to question, are the inflated prices based on the almost wholly captive market?...