The Boathouse Cafe — Restaurant in Guildford

This is a difficult place to review. It has some positives such as the food tastes nice but it has some negatives such as average customer engagement and pretentiousness. So we arrived and were pretty much ignored initially by the person making coffee very slowly and the person serving food, I'll give the kitchen staff a break as they were busy cooking. With nothing to say otherwise and the word 'cafe' built into the name we went and sat at one of the empty tables, there were a few. This drove some engagement as we were told that table was pre-booked and asked if we had a reservation. No we didn't but no problem picking any other table. So all fine but they have a stack of reserved signs that they could have put on the table and if they'd maybe said 'Hi, we'll be with you in a second.' we could have avoided occupying reserved space. Oh be warned this is a very UK centric review where any kind of social awkwardness has a crushing impact on ones ability to eat a fried breakfast. Anyway we moved to the nearest other table and got a menu. Here is where the interesting marketing creeps in. My breakfast came with a potato rosti and plum tomato. Turns out my potato rosti was actually a deep fried pre-made frozen hash brown. Luckily my tomato was a standard type grilled, lucky as plum tomatoes do tend to remind me of plums. Anyway I know I'm splitting hairs but what's wrong with calling a hash brown a hash brown. I know they're basically the same thing but it's like calling the 'Postie' a 'Traditional medium communication executive'. It sounds fancy but it's a pre-frozen hash brown that can be found blessing the plate of any delicious greasy spoon (cafe for those from overseas). So the upside was that breakfast was delicious, not value for money but certainly tasty. The coffee was also very good. The final nail in the coffin for me was that they automatically added a service charge. Now I know our American friends refuse to pay serving staff a decent wage but here we don't and so service payments or tips are actually a way of rewarding great service. The price advertised is the price you pay, if you want you can add to that if you feel the service has been good. Crazy concept I know. But the cafe deciding that your service has been great is if anything a sign of poor service. It is a tax on British awkwardness at challenging things. As such I promptly left my wife to fight that one and pick up the bill. Retreating to the car to 'warm it up'. Would I go again? Probably not. Do I think it's worth a bash if you...

Lovely building and nicely fitted out but that's where it stops. I cannot remember a time when I've had such bad food, in fact it was inedible. I dearly wanted this to be a success as Guildford needs more decent restaurants. The nibbles at £9.50 were atrocious, 4 pieces of chewy (tempura?) squid and 5 small overcooked chorizo sausages with a dipping sauce that didn't go with them. Then there was the artesian bread, which was anything far from artesian. I didn't think it was possible to go downhill from here but they managed to achieve this with the main courses. The Hake came with a greyish mash that questioned whether you should be eating the dish at all. The scallop dish was inedible, served with woody samphire. The side dish of vegetables consisted of woody asparagus. The chicken ballottine was chopped up as though it was being served to a child. I understand that the manager wasn't in that night, which is a shame as I would have loved to tell them my thoughts on the food, and to be honest the service. We were the only people in the restaurant (other people were sitting outside) but despite this we had to summon the waitress to order wine and then again to request water for the table. The staff were apologetic about the food but I would seriously question the credentials of the supposed (two) chefs as I think an GCSE home economics student could present a better plate of food. Needless to say we left with empty stomachs and a feeling of real disappointment. This place could be so good, beautiful restaurant in a...

Lovely service & lovely setting. Such brilliant staff but unfortunately the food just wasn’t it…

I chose it for the Vegan Pancakes and the portion was TINY!! 3 very small, very thin pancakes with (originally honey - which isn’t vegan/plant based) but swapped for maple syrup & 10 or so blueberries. It was disappointing. It also came 15 minutes after everyone else’s, after a reminder! (Again, really great service as this was sorted quickly) The Vegan Breakfast could do with some extras, e.g. scrambled tofu and vegan bacon to make it the equivalent of the normal full English. As this was also small. Unfortunately the normal breakfasts were quite undercooked, the sausages looked uncooked and the rostis were soggy.

I’m unsure if I’d go back unless the added a few more vegan options & I read some overwhelming good reviews as it fell a bit short of the mark!

I did love the service and everyone was super friendly. To their credit, we were a party of 10 so perhaps hard to time...