Côte Wimbledon — Restaurant in London

I’ve visited several Côte Brasserie locations across London and have generally had positive experiences. Unfortunately, my visit on the evening of Tuesday 8th July was by far the worst.

Upon arrival, a table directly in front of us had just been vacated. However, we were asked to wait at the entrance for the manageress, as the other staff were apparently not authorised to seat us. Instead of promptly clearing the available table or offering us menus, we stood there waiting for around 7–8 minutes before the manageress approached us. Even then, she did not acknowledge us properly, nor did she take any steps to seat us. She continued to serve other guests in a noticeably unhurried manner.

The table remained uncleared, no menus were offered, and no staff member checked in with us. After an additional 10 minutes of being ignored, we decided to leave.

To add context: yes, it was during Wimbledon and the restaurant was busy, but by no means overwhelmed. I could clearly see at least four available tables, including the one right in front of us. The venue was slightly understaffed and lacked effective management or basic customer service training.

As a restaurant owner myself, I understand the pressures of a busy service and am usually very patient. Still, the lack of urgency or initiative from the manageress was disappointing. She appeared far more interested in engaging in light-hearted conversations with seated guests than making any effort to welcome new ones.

Managing a restaurant is no easy task, but in this case, there was a clear absence of leadership. At a minimum, she could have delegated someone to clear a table or simply offered us menus and informed us of a short wait due to the Wimbledon crowd. Instead, we stood there for nearly 18 minutes without any acknowledgement or action.

I would strongly encourage Côte’s head office to review the CCTV footage from that day. It will show quite clearly what happened; including the manageress’s lack of engagement, the uncleared tables, and the guests left waiting. This was one of the busiest times of the year, and turning people away due to poor front-of-house management should be a cause for serious concern. I hope this is taken as an opportunity to reassess training and leadership at...

(7 of us dining together, i was the bill payer) the food was beyond appalling. dining in on the evening of the 6th of April. I realised that it was not just me when i noticed that no one was finishing their meals. all around me, dinners were being sent back to the kitchen. my meal : fougasse, bread was fine, salty garlic, baked camembert - possibly the smallest i have ever seen served for sharing at a restaurant anywhere, zero flavour. moules - smallest ever portion, about 15 shells, all open (which means done in a combi steamer) and flavourless thin broth with blobs of oil floating around in it. clearly no cream, mussles were not cooked in the broth. tarte tatin - uncooked pastry at the centre (from frozen) and cornflour and colouring clearly used with sugar syrup instead of butter and brown sugar, even my teenage boys would not venture past the edges. of the other meals, unfinished parmentiere x2; unfinished cheese souffle, except for the mashed potato, and untouched beef bourgignon requires a special mention. the beef cheek was fatty and unrendered (despite supposed slow cooking) the carrots, onions, mushrooms, firm, chewy, and undercooked (you would think this impossible). finally the sauce itself thickened with starch and salty but oddly sickening. one steak, a fillet was so small i had to apologise to my guest. seared for too long on a dirty grill with embers stuck to the steak so burnt on the outside and rare in the centre. a burger served with fresh cucumber slices on the patty (ran out of pickles?)

finally, i made no fuss. i waited for everyone to leave (as it was meant to be a celebration and was not going further spoil the evening) and went back to the manager to express my concern about the poor overall standard and incompetence. a day later and the entire party are feeling slightly unwell. i can only think that cooking with rancid oil was the reason this might occur, enough to upset but not really make anyone really ill. it would explain the general bitterness and lack of flavour across the...

First of all, I was not planning to write a bad review for this restaurant because the issues I had back in Oct was raised directly to them but since two emails I sent had been totally ignored by the restaurant, I decided to tell everyone about my terrible experience with Côte Wimbledon. I booked a table for 10 people to celebrate my birthday on 26/Oct. We had to preorder food which was done 2 days prior to the booking date. The service was good and the staff was friendly. However, I had 2 problems there: 1st I was served a suspicious quiche Lorraine. It wasn’t tasty and there was a thin layer of green something between the hard dough (base of the quiche) and the not tasty toppings. I asked the waitress and she said it looked fine but she didn’t pay too much attention to be honest. I found out later in the evening that I had food poisoning and spent the night feeling very very sick. I could not work the next day until 2 pm. The second issue (less serious but still not nice) was that the dessert I preordered (profiteroles) wasn’t available! They served it to the table next to ours few min before telling me that they ran out of it. How is that possible if I preordered? I expected more organisation and respect towards me who was the birthday girl. They did offer me another dessert on the house but it wasn’t what I was hoping for (I was dying to try the Autumn special profiteroles). I’m glad my friends did have a good evening but my experience wasn’t good at all. The worst part for me was to be ignored when I raised the problem with the restaurant. I wanted them to investigate what happened to the quiche that was served to me. My impression is that it has been heated up and frozen back few times prior to being served to me. I felt very sick so the issue was very serious. Considering my bad experience and the lack of attention from the restaurant after I shared a serious issue related to the food they served, I do not recommend this...