Nicholas James — Restaurant in England

My wife and I have been to your Ashley Cross outlet several times and always enjoyed the drinks, food and environment. We visited last Saturday with a booking at 7.15pm and from that point onwards we didn’t enjoy the night. I spent as much time waiting for service at the bar than I did sitting with my wife, at one point her sympathy extended to coming up with my drink!

Aside from the numerous delays there were a couple of other issues. We’d wanted cocktails to start but the waitress informed me that there was a missing product from each of the cocktails and therefore we couldn’t order these. The young bar assistant brought our food and cleared our plates, and unfortunately we received no communication other that “here’s your food” and a couple of grunts when clearing.

Sadly it spoiled our night out and we left with our remaining wine. Initially I wrote to the restaurant to avoid public reviews, but a week later not a peep...

My friends and I wanted to go and try somewhere new in the local area and stumbled across Nicholas James. We visited on a Saturday night and it was understandably very busy, however, this was way more of a bar ‘vibe’ and not a foody place at all. Genuinely felt like we were eating our food in the middle of a club, we couldn’t hear eachother speak at all. The food was nice, however they ran out of bread? So one of the small plates we ordered we had to leave because it wasn’t enjoyable without bread. It would also be useful to have on the menu how much roughly the boards serve, we ordered a small board between 3 and it wasn’t enough, we should’ve got the large board, especially as the small plate was a write off. The staff were really friendly hence why we didn’t want to complain on the night but probably should have done… I...

Go back to the Deli / cafe style it was such an incredible vibe and totally different place than anywhere els! the only problem with that concept was a lack of staff and waiting 30 mins for a coffee but you got The greatest Croque monsieur you would ever taste so it was worth the wait. I did see people leave because of the wait though so if you had solved the staffing issues it was perfect. BUT I just went today and it was awful. Menu is not as good, the look and vibe has completely changed even the clientele has changed and there were less staff lol. You have got rid of the best parts and then made the worse parts worse? What on earth? To the owner - your initial concept was perfect the only thing letting it down was staffing. You need atleast 3 on a day. Please go back to the original...