La Bobina Cirencester - Spanish Tapas & Wine Bar — Restaurant in Cotswold District

Amazing food, terrible, depressing service

Went here last night. Let me first say that the food was excellent, really very good. Great flavors and variety, and pretty reasonably priced. The drinks too, were very good and well chosen. That should be enough for any restaurant to be a winner, but unfortunately here it is not.

Our service experience was as follows:

We arrived on time, having made a booking for 6 people at 6pm, with the restaurant mostly empty before the dinner rush. Despite this, there is no suitable table prepared and we get sat temporarily upstairs at a table for five, with one chair sticking out into a thoroughfare. We don't get given any menus (drinks or food), or water.

For the next 10-15 minutes, while we wait for another party to leave our table every time the waitress wants to pass to reach another table, she makes one of our party stand and move her chair, even though there is a second route to the same table, which is the same length and doesn't pass this way.

Eventually, the other party leave, the table is cleaned and we sit down. We don't get any menus or water. After 10 minutes at a new table and another party being sat down and given menus next to us, I got up, found a waitress and requested menus. She said she was "just on her way to get them" when I spoke to her, and brings them after another 5 minutes or so.

When they come to take our drinks order, we ask for some water along with the drinks. This doesn't come. There are also only 5 glasses on the table for 6 people, and 5 sets of cutlery. Rather than wait for someone to return, I go and get these myself. 10 minutes after the drinks come, I also go and get water for myself since it is clearly not coming otherwise. When this runs out, I go and get more water.

The table next to us that sat down later meanwhile receives their food before our order has been taken. After another 5 minutes the waitress comes to take our food order. The waitress asks how we would like the food served and we said we would like it to be brought as it was ready.

We put it the order in, and for a while all is well. This illusion soon evaporates after 40 minutes with no food.

Taking matters into my own hands, I go to check on the food. The waitress assures me it's "just coming now" and indeed most of the food then arrives within 5 minutes. The waitress doesn't check whether we need more drinks, or get more water, which has also run out again. One item didn't come with the rest so we check with the waitress, who says she will check with the kitchen.

We never see her again, and the chicken we ordered is nearly as elusive.

The food comes out and is excellent. It is a shame that we don't have any drinks with it, but by this point we are too hungry to care and just eat.

After the food is served, we are not visited by any waitress that we haven't actively called over.

15 minutes after reordering the chicken dish, we ask another waitress to check on it. She later returns and says that it has gone into the kitchen, and clears a few of the dirty plates that have now accumulated on our table. She doesn't check whether anyone would like drinks.

The chicken is brought out 10 minutes later, and we dutifully eat it. We put in a second drinks order (our second in 2 hours) ask the waitress for the bill. Another waitress brings over the drinks but no bill.

10 minutes later, we ask another waitress for the bill. We ask her again after another 5 minutes and this time she apologises, goes and gets it, then tells us we should pay downstairs at the bar.

The chicken leg we waited over 90 minutes for is not on the bill, which is a small silver lining around the miserable slog that is the service here. I cannot remember the last time I went anywhere with service this lazy and careless - if our experience is anywhere near representative, the kitchen should take a serious look at the front of house because the fantastic food here is being let...

We visited the Cirencester restaurant on Tuesday night, for a mini celebration meal - restaurant seemed fairly busy which we thought was a good sign. When first arriving the waitress was distracted even though she greeted us, and after 5 minutes of standing around we were finally offered the table we had booked - no major issue, but not the best start.

When handed the menu’s we weren’t told of any items that weren’t available, so in proceeding to order Oysters a little later on, we were then told they didn’t have them in - with any restaurant I’ve been to in the past, I’ve been told of any dishes unavailable as soon as the menu was provided - so i’m unsure why this wasn’t mentioned.

Ordered food, service was good and friendly overall, no major issues.

Moving on to the food, we were thoroughly disappointed from start to finish. We ordered quite a bit (definitely over ordered, but we were offered to take some home after) as there were plenty of things that took our fancy. However when receiving the dishes we were completely underwhelmed.

Bread, was ok but it was just an average soft French baguette (6 horizontal slices) served with a side of garlic aioli which appeared to be from a jar. £4.50 for this felt a bit much.

Chicken - completely under seasoned and 0 flavour, really really dry, honestly Nando’s or any chain restaurant I’ve been to has had more flavour - and cheaper too.

Anchovies - 3 anchovies on a plate with some peppers (peppers also seemed to have just been out of a jar) absolutely 0 reason why these 2 things should have gone together, and there was 0 mention of peppers on the menu. Anchovies also to be honest tasted a bit ‘off’ And £6.90 for 3 anchovies is an absolute disgrace, putting it bluntly.

Aubergine fritter - Wish I’d taken a photo of this because it was just absolutely dripping in oil, and the oil was the only thing we could taste. Aubergine was sliced long ways instead of horizontally which meant that the aubergine became incredibly soggy with oil. Any aubergine fritter I’ve had in the past has been slices thinly and horizontal, so I’m not sure why this was done differently.

Pork belly - Nice and crispy, but served with some sort of chilli mayo which did not go with the pork belly at all, didn't quite understand the pairing

Fresh tomatoes - The tomatoes weren’t great, lacking flavour and dish lacking any imagination, i believe the tomatoes were in a sherry vinegar, but overall it was just bland - wish we hadn’t ordered this, around £5.00 for 8 tomato slices..

Goats cheese - Lovely with honey and nuts but you can’t really go wrong with honey and goats cheese.

Crispy squid - Squid was nice, but nothing special, serviced with a lemon aioli but seemed to be out of a jar.

Octopus special - Served with butter beans which hadn't soaked up 0 flavour, and just felt like an unnecessary add on, completely bland dish, and beans just felt like an after thought. Octopus didn't seem fresh at all either.

At the time, I was trying to see the positives in this meal, but after a few days I’ve come to a conclusion that spending £100 on a meal, with 2 glasses of wine and added service charge I’d have expected better, it’s and it was just not good enough. Reviews on here are great, and maybe we just ordered the wrong dishes, but I was not impressed with the majority of the dishes served, won’t be recommending...

Visited on 4th august. Had high hopes for this place. Unfortunately was let down by the service. I couldn’t tell what sort of chairs were in the various areas of the restaurant from the description on the website. I plumped for the snug upstairs, but wrote specifically on the booking form ‘please can we sit in an area which is ‘buzzy’ and at normal height tables and chairs’.

When we arrived, I glanced over to the kitchen to see one of the chefs lick his thumb. I carried on looking at him to see if he went on to wash his hands but he carried on handling things without doing so.

The restaurant was really buzzing and I didn’t want to make a big deal about it so we followed the waiter to our table upstairs. We were the only people there and it was totally dead. We could hear everyone downstairs having a jolly old time. They obviously hadn’t bothered reading the request when I booked the table (all table options were available when I booked two weeks beforehand).We were told there were no tables downstairs when we asked if we could move. We were assured people would be coming later in the evening (it was 7:45) but they didn’t arrive for at least 30 mins.

We then ordered 7 plates of food. The first 4 arrived together and were quite good. Nothing exceptional and not particularly good value. One was two scallops for £10, presented in a scallop shell which reminded me of an ashtray.

We waited for the remaining dishes, and waited and waited (at least 40 mins). The waiting staff were very pleasant but weren’t really around upstairs unless they were delivering dishes or drinks, it took a while to alert them that we still had three dishes to come. We had to point out which dishes we were waiting for (surely they should know).

Another dish arrived and then another twenty minute wait for the one afterwards. We never got the patatas bravas (it had been so long we had actually forgotten what we had ordered).

The bill arrived after we had to ask for it, even though everyone had left long ago.

I would have spoken to the manager at the time but he had gone long before, I suspect (by this time it was 10:40, we had been there for three hours). There were only two members of staff left when I paid.

I can’t recall ever not leaving a tip but this time I didn’t. They hadn’t even taken the patatas bravas off the bill.

Good service and atmosphere make a huge difference to the experience which i guess is why there are so many positive reviews and our experience was so...