Botanica Hall — Restaurant in London

From the moment we walked in the staff were rude and disinterested. The ‘greeter’ on the door didn’t even look up when I approached her she just said ‘yes?’. She then proceeded to ask me how many people were on the booking like it wouldn’t have said on her screen and took us to a table that was far too small for the number of people. The waitress slammed down a bowl of ‘rum punch’ (which was essentially water and orange juice with a tiny bit of rum.) We had the bottomless brunch and the drinks in general were slow to be topped up and of poor quality. The food was awful. I ordered the breaded chicken salad which was basically a bland piece of chicken cut up and thrown on a full bag of rocket. My friend asked the waitress if a specific item was vegetarian to which her response was ‘I dunno, I think so yeah’. He googled it and it wasn’t. Towards the end the waitress brought our bill (which we didn’t ask for) and when I say brought it, she walked past our table and slammed it down in front of me without even looking and carried on walking. The price was extortionate for the absolute monstrosity that was the food, drink and service. Our bottomless was until 3pm but at this point it was 3:15pm - I asked the waitress if we could stay on the table to finish our drinks and she said ‘erm I don’t think so no because we need it for a 3pm booking.’ You do the math. Then after another 20 minutes of no one appearing to need our table another staff member came over (presume was a manager) and rudely said ‘right we need your table now and you need to leave your drinks if they aren’t finished’. We took our drinks over to the bar (we’ve paid for the drinks and aren’t going to just leave them, unless the invisible people at the 3pm booking wanted a half bottle of opened Prosecco and 2 half glasses of watered down punch) and I confronted the manager about how he’d spoken to us. I advised him that there are nicer ways of saying things like ‘hello’ and ‘I hope your brunch was nice’, you know basic forms of conversation. He just looked at me blank faced and said ‘yeah fair’ and then walked off. So it’s fair to say I won’t be returning. An absolute waste of time and money. Shocking service, shocking food and I would genuinely advise anyone...

Disappointing Valentine's Day Experience at Botanica Hall.

I am extremely disappointed with the service my partner and I received at Botanica Hall on Valentine's Day. Despite making a reservation well in advance, our first and probably the last experience was far from satisfactory. Upon arrival, we were greeted with a "there is no reservation under your name", that was found after showing our email booking. We decided to go earlier and stay at the bar for a drink before our booking time (8:30), but our table was offered to us with a significant wait time (8:50), despite having reserved a table. Five stars for the friendly barman and the hostess that apologise for the inconvenience, and mistake, but it didn't change anything about the lack of organization and communication among the staff, and it set a negative tone for the evening. Once seated, the poor service continued. It took an unreasonable amount of time for our orders to be taken, and even longer for the food to arrive. When it did, the quality was subpar, with dishes appearing rushed, cold and poorly prepared. Highlights for the main that came before the starters! Unbelievable! It was clear that the staff was unhappy and unable to handle the Valentine's Day effectively. I also had to go towards a waiter and ask to take out our empty plates, which took a significant time to be done. The same when we ask for the bill! I had high expectations for our Valentine's Day experience. However, the lack of attention to detail and overall decline in service have left me extremely disappointed. I hope that management takes this feedback seriously and implements changes to ensure that future guests do not have a similar experience. And don't just answer this review with a "sorry that you had a bad experience", as I've read in another reviews. We understand that Valentine's Day can be a busy time for restaurants, but we believe that proper planning and customer service should have been prioritized to ensure a satisfactory experience for all guests. My Valentine's Day dinner was completely ruined by a chaotic and unpleasant atmosphere, Inattentive and rude waiters! I don't recommend...

I tried the new Botanica Hall, sister of Canova and Teatro. The location is great, in the old Arding & Hobbs building, the decor is similar to Canova with a minimal industrial feel. The atmosphere was good, although the music was far too loud. At 6:30pm the music should be slightly lower so people can have a conversation over their dinner. It was so loud our server couldn’t even hear us when we tried to order food. My watch kept alerting me to dangerous noise decibel levels around 95dB. Maybe turn the music up from around 8pm onwards. Service was very disjointed we had to ask to order food after 20 mins to waiting for someone to take our order. Server didn’t know about the wines, would be good if they could tell us more about the different wines on tap and what they tasted like ie; dry, sweet etc. Had to call people over to clear our table of extra glasses as no one was coming over to check on us.

As for the food, we tried the arancini, 3 pasta dishes, and a Margherita pizza. The tagliatelle pasta was overcooked and clumped together, the burrata was chewy like mozzarella. Dish was completely overpowered by fennel flavour. The slow cooked beef didn’t taste like good quality meat. The pizza was cold but tasted nice. The arancini was quite good, probably the best thing we had.

Bill came out with wrong total, had to call someone over to clarify the correct price.

Yes they are new but I would expect a company that has so many established restaurants to have a smoother opening. Especially as quite a few tables were empty around us all evening so a bit worrying that they won’t be able to cope when it’s full. The manager (I think she was the manager) was lovely though and did her best to address our issues by comping one of the pasta dishes and bringing us a round of espresso martinis on the house.

I have been to Canova Hall a number of times and have always been happy but this location needs some work. Hopefully they can smooth out these teething issues and establish...