Esquires Coffee Buckingham — Restaurant in England

I visited Esquire in Buckingham today, and unfortunately, it was one of the worst coffee experiences I’ve had in a while. My other half had visited earlier in the week and had a positive experience with the gentleman working there, who provided excellent service, including a bowl of water for him and our dog (a much-appreciated gesture, especially as they advertise themselves as dog-friendly). However, today’s visit was the complete opposite.

The service was abysmal. The two girls working clearly had no idea what they were doing. It took 20 minutes to serve two cups of coffee, which cost £8.40 – far too expensive for what was decidedly average coffee. Several customers were visibly unhappy, and I watched them get multiple orders wrong. Their excuse of "there’s only two of us, and we’re busy" didn’t hold water – it wasn’t busy by any reasonable standard. It was painfully obvious they were unorganised and untrained.

The general atmosphere was poor, with a palpable sense of frustration as customers waited far too long. When my other half asked for water, one of the staff, who was on her phone, simply pointed to a bowl without a word – not exactly the welcoming, customer-focused service you’d expect from a local café.

I won’t be returning, which is a shame because I believe in supporting local businesses. However, I can’t justify paying a premium for a mediocre product and enduring unprofessional, unwelcoming service. Esquire needs to seriously address these issues if they hope to...

February 2024 - A year on since my review below we've been back twice in the last week and I'm afraid nothing has improved. Different staff completely, none of whom looked happy or engaged with the customers. The service was slow and my cappuccino was served in a paper cup because they'd 'run out' of cups. Whilst waiting to use the toilet and therefore standing by the washing up area, I could see that there were plates on the floor and on the window sill waiting to be washed, presumably why I had my drink in a paper cup; chaos. We chose a table but then decided to move to a different table. Neither table had been cleared from the previous customers so I removed the items to another area. We were in the café for about ¾ hour and these items were never cleared in that time.

Previous review: There were three staff working two of whom didn't seem to have any training and were operating at about ¼ speed. Called in for a drink and a snack early afternoon. There were 4 or 5 staff on but the service was very slow and not one of them smiled while we were there. They also did not appear to be talking to each other either, so not a great atmosphere. Our drinks were fine but my wife chose a pain au chocolat which she asked to change because it was stale. They were obviously not very happy about this. It seemed like there was no proper manager in charge and it was all a bit amateurish. We won't be going back...

I'm not sure what has happened but last two times I have been here it has been poor standards. First time they had taken our food and drinks order ok... but they didn't take down table numbers and it was a bit chaotic as orders was getting mixed up.. my scrambled eggs on toast came out extremely cold, the lady on the next table mentioned that she saw my plate of food up there for ages before they served it to me... so I sent it back as it was not edible. They did replace it no problem, the other order we had they messed up by giving it to another customer (so had had wait for another to be made up) and the type of bread was wrong. but we didn't raise bread issue as it would be a waste of a Sandwich and yet more time. The girl that was in there at the time was very sorry and she was lovely. Both coffees I may add, were lovely. Today thought let's give it ago and sadly it was not very good... same issue with food being served up poor and cold.. we already turned away a tuna mayo jacket as filling of tablespoon of tuna was plonked on the top of unsliced jacket potato? No butter and no mayo as on the menu. So we switched the tuna one to beans and cheese jacket... and one came out lukewarm and the other there was still bits of ice in the jacket! Note that soup of the day they don't do anymore and they have still left it on the board... only thing that was good...