Côte Cirencester — Restaurant in Cotswold District

Not so great anymore!

I used to like going to Cote restaurants for their great service and tasty food. You could’ve tell when staff were trained properly to be efficient and professional but in a warm, courteous manner however this went downhill.

On Sunday afternoon, me and my husband met up with our friend in Cirencester, he came from London and we thought to take him for a nice, early dinner at Cote (somehow to impress as we all knew Cote Restaurants have a good reputation) however I was unpleasantly surprised to see how waiters/waitresses ignored us throughout the evening. When we first arrived we have been escorted to our table by a nice gent who sat us to a lovely table even though we haven’t booked one prior to our visit.

The misfortune (for us) was him finishing his shift probably at 5 o’clock which has brought us in a situation where we did not have a waiter assigned to our table therefore one of the Managers/Supervisors took our food order (we haven’t been offered the Weekend menus nor the specials as the waiter mentioned when we’ve been sat that they ran out of almost everything what was on there!)

We got our starters not so quick either but ok let’s say that the prawn gratinee needs more time than another starter to be cooked. Unfortunately our friend (who we tried to impress by choosing this restaurant) had to send the prawns back as the food was cold when they brought it from the kitchen. We had to wait another 15 min for his starter but then ours got cold while waiting to eat all together. My starter, calamari, was way too salty however we ate it as we were too hungry. When mains have arrived and had the first taste again it was TOO SALTY for all of us – I had mushrooms crepes with a side of frites (both too salty), my husband had Risotto – salty! and our friend - rib eye steak of course salty as well! This is not the worst part – the worst part of the evening was that nobody cared enough to come and do the check back! And my plate was almost full when let’s say we were done with our meals(this should’ve been a question mark when they cleared the table!) . We also had to wait ages for someone to come and clear the table but nobody did until we drew attention of a waitress (bear in mind after 5 o’clock, at least 3 other waiters started their shifts) which made me think why have we been ignored all evening.

When finally our table was cleared we advised one of the waitresses that we want to speak with the Manager hence BeckyE approached us and asked what’s happened. She did offer to take everything off the bill however this is not the reason why we wanted to dine at Cote. I said to her that we will pay for our dinner but they need to escalate this with Chef in the kitchen (food being way to salty) and also about the staff members who ignored us completely as they had no idea what’s happening around them! Of course she took off the bill 2 dishes (which I appreciate) but the evening was a total fiasco and went home still hungry

You have failed our expectations instead of exceeding,...

Came for a family meal as a 5 and booked one of the earliest evening spots on Friday 19th. Really looking forward to it as I had never been and the family recommended. Safe to say we won’t be back it was a shambles from the moment we walked in. The staff member who was at the door didn’t know how to seat us or where we’d been placed & it’s took a while to find someone to actually seat us. Our server was a young girl and she was lovely can’t fault her at all. We ordered our food and we were waiting about 35-40 minutes for our starters we were starving by the time they arrived we were told 5 minutes about the 25 minute mark. The pate was tasty and the sharing platter was okay nothing too special. At this point the restaurant was too full and barely any staff. They take our starter plates & we then wait nearly an hour for our mains when they arrived it was all just very underwhelming sloppy presentation and mediocre in flavour. We ate it because we were starving but we left a fair amount. Then desserts some of us had the set menu so we decided why not as we were still quite hungry. I ordered a pavlova and as you can see it was an absolute state and almost inedible. My partner ordered a crepe that looked even worse than mine. The picture is exactly how it was served visibly been left under the lights and having managed a well known dessert restaurant I know my crepes it had been left under the light too long and was on a crepe plate that was too hot as it was crispy and had a lot of elasticity. We ordered a chocolate mousse and were given 2 scoops of chocolate ice cream instead we explained we’d ordered something different and we were then told they had sold out of the mousse. At this point we had had enough we were told it would be taken off the bill as it wasn’t what we had ordered it was still on the bill when it arrived. We asked to take off the service which I never do because staff work hard and front of house especially. We heard several customers getting very irate about their wait times some were over an hour. This overall was poorly managed, poorly prepared and shockingly troubleshooted during service. Will not...

We were a party of four. The negative first. I chose the half chicken with a ratatouille sauce. The chicken was very bland and the small amount of sauce had little to distinguish it from tinned tomato.

Two of us chose the fishermans pie topped with mashed potato. It came in one of those serving bowls from which it's awkward to eat. The fish was in a fairly thin sauce and there was no spoon provided. So we asked for bread to help mop up the sauce. Here endeth the negative.

Apparently the bread was delicious and made all the difference to the fish pie, which became very enjoyable. The fourth of our party chose the pork belly which was also enjoyed.

To accompany my chicken I asked to substitute french beans for the chips, which I don't eat. This was no problem at all.

For desert two of us had an apple tart with ice cream, which was delicious, especially for me as I don't usually allow myself sweet deserts. One of us had the caramelised banana desert, describing it as one of the best deserts she'd ever had. As for the fourth desert, it was creme broulle, with a difference. Our waitress had discretely enquired earlier whether it was somebody's birthday. It would be in a few days time and we were there because of that upcoming birthday. We thought no more about it. When the creme broulle arrived it was on an outsize plate with "Happy Birthday" written on the plate in chocolate sauce and sprinkled with icing sugar. It was a very thoughtful gesture which helped to make it a special evening.

The meal was washed down with a very pleasant bottle of Merlot.

It was Friday night and the restaurant was busy. It is much larger inside that it appears to be from the street.

Finally a special call out to Dannielle our very pleasant and attentive waitress who made the whole evening a pleasure, in a restaurant that I would certainly...