Côte Esher — Restaurant in Elmbridge

There was a group of us for lunch on a Monday. I can only assume that all experienced trained kitchen staff were off. I had a salad nicoise, a classic French meal. Sadly the kitchen had no idea how to prepare a salad. The tuna was cooked well and that was it. It was a pile of untrimmed lettuce leaves, looked like a whole lettuce, mottled dark outside leaves not trimmed, thick white stem and the small inner leaves not separated but cut in a wedge with all the stem on. The leaves were not torn or sliced just whole This person could never have seen a prepared salad. The anchovies tangled and buried under the steak, as were a few beans. A hard boiled egg from the fridge cut in half was thrown on the plate with a few cold from fridge new potatoes, cheap tasteless and seedy cherry tomatoes and a few hard green beans. There was zero presentation skills, especially as this salad can look beautiful it properly presented. On top of the tuna steak was a heap, a good dessert spoon, of black olive tapenade from a jar in the fridge, that was totally overpowering. The salad wasn’t dressed and I had to request some vinaigrette , which was good when it came. Is there no one to train staff? Have they ever eaten in France? Do not call yourself a French restaurant if you have no finesse. My friends all had ice cream. It was served with massive dessert spoons, the large teaspoons on the table were the correct size.

This chain needs to go the way of all others like Ask or only open when they have experienced kitchen staff who understand food and presentation.

I feel I’ve been mugged when I’m served food to such low standard. Not by the staff, they don’t know any different, but by the organisation of...

Lovely birthday meal spoiled by RACIST waitress who came over to us TWICE to ask us if we had paid the bill, after we had already settled the £75 bill with another waitress!!!!

Came here Tuesday 29th November around 7pm for my mother's birthday meal. Main waitress who was serving us was really lovely. I think she may have even been the manager? Not sure. I gave her a cake that I had bought for my Mum and she kindly brought it out with her team singing Happy Birthday after we had dinner. Thank you!

However, after I had paid the £75 bill by card, my Mother and I were sitting at the table chatting. A few minutes later this eastern european lady came over and said "Have you paid?". We were shocked and said yes. She then walked away and then came back again 1 minute later and asked us AGAIN "have you paid?". We then said yes again and asked what the problem was. She then just said "ok" and walked away.

There were 3 other tables around us with people sitting so they could easily hear this disrespectful woman questioning us each time.

We were the only non-white people in the restaurant at the time. And she did not interrogate and harass any of the other tables like this. So it's very clear that this was racially motivated.

Absolutely disgusting way to treat customers. Spoiled our meal.

All she had to do was check the till system or speak to the waitress that was serving us and she would have seen that we had already paid!

We've been to several Cote branches before and never had such issue. Unfortunately, we won't be coming back to this branch again after this experience. The woman...

I had a disappointing experience at Cote.

My mother had just moved to the area today and we were looking for a quick bite to eat, before we started to unpack. Despite the restaurant not being full and having empty tables, the waitress on the door was very rude and immediately told us that they were full. There were a few empty tables which could clearly be seen in the windows.

I have been to other Cote chains many times before and have never encountered such behavior.

I quickly went online and found that there were indeed tables available, so I made a reservation and returned to the restaurant, hoping to wait at the bar and have some drinks. However, we were not allowed in and were told that our reservation was for 15 minutes later. I went away and, to my surprise, our reservation was canceled even though there were empty tables.

I was surprised and frustrated that Cote required reservations. It's not even a high-end restaurant, and the prices are reasonable - FiveGuys is more expensive and that's a fast food restaurant. If they had simply told us politely that there was a dress code or some other issue, it would have been more acceptable. Unfortunately, they were rude and unaccommodating.

As someone who lives in Richmond, I am disappointed that my first experience in Esher was ruined by the poor service at Cote. We ended up going to Coppa Club in Cobham, where we were treated much better. I hope that Cote can improve their service in the future so that other customers do not have the same...