Brewhemia — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

To sum this up, it was an incredibly long wait for poor service and bog-standard overpriced food.

We arrived at the pub an hour early - our fault and we were told we could wait and have a drink and then to head back over at 4, which was absolutely fine. My partner went to get us a drink from the bar as were waiting and couldn’t actually get to the bar to be served because it’s surrounded with people eating.

At 4pm we head back over to get our table, the hostess at the front smiled at us and then continued to walk past us and straight out the front door. It wasn’t until 10 minutes later a waiter came over and apologised and told us he wasn’t the host but will try to help us as best as he could and then once a new hostess realised he was trying to help she then came and took over. She looks and says ‘your table is just getting set up, please can you wait by the bar and i will come and grab you when it’s ready.’ Not that another customer was leaving, just that it was getting set up. So we wait for another 15 minutes before she comes over and tell us to go straight through to another room where we will then be seated by someone else. We head through and then we wait again for another 10 minutes for another hostess.

The next hostess comes over looking confused and then checks our booking (however I’m not sure why she would need to do this as surely the first hostess would have told her we were coming through?) and then looks around the room (which there were many empty tables ready so we are unsure how our table took so long to ‘set up’ when we could have been sat on any of these tables?) before deciding on one and taking us to it.

The waitress we had seemed to be the only helpful and observant waitress in the room who made sure we were ordered as soon as possible and was always checking if everything was okay. The problem we then had was the fact we had ate our starters and we’re given our food before my partner was given a drink he had ordered at the same time as ordering the food.

The food was cold and normal pub food standard and half of the roast dinner was a cold and extremely dry Yorkshire pudding - definitely not worth the £81 that we paid.

Half way through eating, a singer comes on. She was a brilliant singer but at 5pm when eating a roast dinner, I would actually like to have a conversation with my partner and hear him over the incredibly loud singer and pianist. It was clear that where we were sat was not a restaurant but mainly a bar as we were surrounded by work Christmas nights out. Not what we expected when booking to eat a roast dinner on a Sunday afternoon.

That leads us onto the last issue. My partner paid for half of our food whilst I went to the toilet and when I came out, he told me that the waitress had taken half of the payment and then walked away from the table. We made eye contact with the same waitress 3 times to try and finish paying the rest of the bill as she clearly could see I was back at the table, before watching her go to another table and give them their bill, go back to the till, go back to the other table and took their payment, then we made contact with her and watched her go to the till, get another tables bill, go over to give them the bill, go back to the till and then head back over to their table and take payment and then head back to the till for another 10 minutes. In that whole time we made eye contact and tried to speak to multiple waitresses to try and speed up the process as we had a 4 hour drive home to do, and the response we got was a blank face and them carrying on walking past us.

Overall we spent 2 and half hours having a meal that could have been easily done in around an hour, we couldn’t hear each other and we were constantly waiting for staff to actually do their job in a not so busy restaurant for the amount of staff around. The food was not up to the standard of which it is charged and quite frankly the staff do not communicate with each other or...

From the moment we arrived, we got a bad impression of this very busy place, and had we not pre-booked for a birthday, we would have left.

We arrived half an hour early for our booking and asked whether there was any chance of being seated early, conscious that this may not be possible. As it happened, it wasn't, but we were brusquely told we'd have to wait at the bar and return at the agreed time. At the bar we wanted to order a pint of bitter, only to be told by very confused staff that they didn't know what we meant, and went to give us Angostura Bitters used in cocktails. What kind of ale house doesn't know what a bitter is?

We returned to the front desk at the agreed time and after a few more rude grunts from the people on the desk, were told to "go upstairs where we'd be shown to our table". At the top of the stairs, nobody reacted to our presence. We had to flag down a passing barman who then took us to another desk and after several minutes were shown to a table.

No sooner had we sat down, a confused waitress approached us to ask "are you dining here", seemingly apologetic that we may have sat down where we weren't supposed to be. We gave our details for a fourth time and were finally allowed to begin our evening.

We were then given cutlery which was no sooner placed down as taken away as they realised it was dirty. After what seemed like an age, our drinks orders were taken and we ordered food. We were told that the prawns ordered for the starter would come with the shell on but items would be provided to wash our hands, and were told that the steak for the main would come on a sizzling plate so we could "cook to our liking". Somewhat perplexed and sick of all the delays, we proceeded.

The starters came and the waitress leaned over the food she'd already put down to place other plates down - a major no-no - and then said again about the cleaning items for the prawns. The meal itself was horrid, as the prawns were nigh on impossible to eat without making an absolute mess, and they were served with rock hard chunks of dry bread, like prison food. It was so dry as to be inedible.

The twice-promised cleaning items never materialised and when we told the waitress this when she came to clear the plates, she apologised but still didn't provide anything! We then had to ask for fresh cutlery as everything had been taken away with the starter.

When the mains arrived, they weren't kidding about the steaks. For £26 you're presented with a modest sized steak not cooked at all - entirely raw - and left to cook it yourself. But as they don't provide you with a plate, the steak continues to cook even once you've done their job and cooked it for yourself, because there's nowhere to remove it to. The accompanying onion rings were swimming in grease and couldn't be eaten, with the mac and cheese like a runny custard with pasta floating solemnly in it.

By the time the waitress came to clear the plates, which took an age, we asked to speak to someone about the whole sorry experience. Even that took forever, and during our eventual discussion we were told that the waitress was 'really upset about it all', which seemed unnecessary detail as though it somehow invalidated the fact that the entire experience had been horrible from start to finish.

To their credit, they decided to wipe the bill in its entirety and gave us a round of drinks by way of further apology. Given that the bar bill was quite small compared to the food bill, I suspect it would have seem trite to ask for a small amount and so the whole amount was waived instead.

So to give them their due, they did respond to the complaint in the best way they could have done, but we left feeling hungry, disappointed, and quite honesty - stressed. Nothing about the visit was relaxing or enjoyable, it started off badly and got worse with each new thing that they botched up.

Suffice to say, we won't...

Had one of the worst booking and dining experiences we’ve ever had.

Was looking for somewhere to book for a brunch the morning after our wedding in Edinburgh and brewhemia came highly recommended.

Got in touch with the restaurant to see if they would be able to cater for a group of around 20 guests which we were informed would be possible so we went ahead with the booking.

Once the booking was secured we were then told we had to prepay a deposit ahead of the booking which we organised and sent over.

We were then told we had to preorder the food ahead of the booking with it being a larger booking, went in to the menu provided and it was now for a 3 course meal. Contacted the restaurant and was told that this was because of a menu change over and that the brunch menu is no longer available despite us booking the brunch menu. I raised this complaint and they spoke to the chef who reluctantly agreed to honour the original booking, almost as if doing us a favour. We were also told at that point that we wouldn’t be able to split the bill and it would have to be paid on one account which is an inconvenience with so many guests but we agreed.

We arrived a little early so took a seat at the bar to have a coffee while we waited for the table to be set.

Once called through, we realised they’d set up two separate tables to sit the entire booking despite us asking if they could accommodate a booking of around 20. If we had known we would not have been sat together we would have booked elsewhere as this was a brunch for everyone.

Half of the booking had arrived and the waitress asked if we were ready to do a drinks order and we explained that we’d be better waiting for the rest of the booking to arrive before we ordered drinks. 5 minutes passed and the same waitress came over to ask if we were ready to make drinks orders despite the group still not having arrived.

The rest of the group arrived and we were ready to take drinks orders but the waitress only took half the table and missed the rest so we had to ask for drinks separately. The drinks arrived and they weren’t correct so had to get the waitress to come back with the correct order.

We were sat for about 45 minutes waiting on the pre ordered food before we were told that there is a delay in the food coming despite it being a preordered menu. They came out with some complimentary pastries but we still had to wait a further 30 minutes before we got everyone’s food out.

One of our group had to leave to catch a train before they had eaten because the food hadn’t came out in time. I spoke to a waitress to explain this and that they’ll need to take this off the final bill and she said she’d have to speak to the manager.

The food finally came out and the waitresses didn’t know who was having what despite us having name cards with our order on the card so we had to coordinate the waitresses to deliver the food to the correct people. There were issues with the plates that had to be then taken back and corrected.

We were disappointed with the food as it had taken an hour and a half and it was not worth the wait. The food was basic and there had obviously not been a lot of effort put in as this was the “old” menu.

We were all eager to finish and end the full experience. I spoke to the manager who was very apologetic and explained all of the above issues. She had said that she would sort the bill for us and give us a round of drinks for free.

The bill arrived split into the two separate tables and only one table had had a round of drinks taken off despite it being one booking and a service charge was added which was laughable.

The manager promptly took the service charge off and we could finally end the awful dining experience.

We had organised a whole wedding in the months leading up to this brunch and this booking was genuinely more hassle than planning a wedding.

I would never visit or recommend this...