Firehouse Bar & Grill — Restaurant in England

We booked here in advance, based on reviews we had read, for a special anniversary meal. We both ordered the mixed grill and were very disappointed with what we received. I started with the gammon, which was very very salty. An already salty meat was seasoned with even more salt to the point of it making my mouth and lips go funny. We found the steak was quite chewy, we asked for medium and it was over cooked. And every single piece of meat, including the lamb which was tiny and the pork which was dry and underwhelming was seasoned in the exact same way. Just very very salty. When the waitress checked on us, we mentioned this but she seemed quite busy and awkward, she said she would mention this to the kitchen, and only offered us something else like mac and cheese, which isn’t what we came to eat at a firehouse “grill” for and a cup of water. She said she would see what she can do for us but never came back. We left half of our meal and it wasn’t until we tried to get the servers attention when we were ready to just go that she said she had spoken to her manager who would come over and talk to us, which was a little late by this point. Another server came over with our bill, and said they had taken off our drinks and fries?! We had only had a basic cola and one beer, so that was laughable. We said we weren’t happy to pay £50 for something that was barely edible and palatable but would meet them half way and pay for one of the meals. They tried to argue we ate most of it, and that if we had said sooner they could have cooked us fresh food… I argued we did say sooner, but no one came back. Plus we were apprehensive to order more food that we wouldn’t enjoy and feel more awkward complaining again. They eventually went back to their manager (who we never saw) and they agreed to take off the price of one of the meals and add back on the drinks and fries as well as a service charge that we we debating to ask them to remove. It was the most disappointing experience and it felt very under parr compared to other smoke/grill/steak places...

Very disappointed with the attitude from the assistant manager here, to the point that we walked out rather than give them our business. The following might come across as a bunch of haughty tourists being annoying, but seriously we're a chilled out, very polite and forgiving group. Arriving to an empty restaurant and requesting a table for 8 for an early lunch, we were seated at the back of the restaurant, far away from the majestic views of the harbour. We requested, very politely, to be sat further forward, which is when things got weird. Of course if it was busy then moving a large group of 8 would be difficult or impossible, but note that the restaurant was almost entirely empty. We were told quite aggressively that that this wasn't possible because he (the assistant manager) had already grouped 2 tables together for us. As ridiculous as that was, we suggested then that we instead move to two tables of 4 which brought the response (again, agressively) that "it will be getting busy and that will be too difficult for the kitchen to deal with". Honestly it's hard to know how to respond to this strange logic but the guy's manner really got our backs up as you'd expect. When questioned as to how that could be, he responded "fine, do what you like!". We walked out. Despite the young kids who were starving and going to a nearby pub without any views, this was preferable to dealing with this guy anymore. I always try to be as nice as possible to service staff, not least those who have the power to launch something disgusting into my meal, so, we left and would recommend strongly that everyone else avoids this place. There are plenty of other lovely restaurants in St Ives with beautiful views and...

I was highly disappointed by our evening here. Upon arrival the bar staff downstairs were friendly, patient and helpful. Making some jokes and nothing was a problem for them. We headed to our table upstairs and from then on it just went downhill. After 20 minutes of being sat down our order was taken, after I got up to ask for someone to come over. Staff weren't smiley or attentive. We ordered and the starters came in a reasonable time, I ordered my beef burger which actually came as chicken (I'm not sure how you get that wrong), I had to get up to tell them, they came with a replacement burger and by this time everyone had almost finished - which is why I told them not to bother when mentioning the mistake - the burger again was wrong with no caramelized onion and the wrong chips, to top this off the burger was so so dry with no seasoning. Again I went up to tell them and was told it would be taken off the bill (the least they could do as I didn't even eat it!). The bill came and we had noticed they added chips to each meal! (I still had to pay for mine as they left them when going to get a replacement burger!) We ordered and asked whether chips came with the burgers which they said yes. Why do we then have to pay for them? To end the night the "Manager" was so rude, making comments as we walked away and did not want to help us at all. Will never be coming back here! It's such a shame as the gin bar is great - you should just not be serving food and get...