Little Bay Croydon — Restaurant in London

I had some lovely wine (the Montepulciano d'Abruzzo) and a good starter (the choux crab - a novel/fun kind of dish for me and involving some nice flavours). However, my partner's starter, the parson's pastry, quite flavourless and there was little filling. I was very excited about my confit duck but it ended up being pretty dry and not anything like as flavoursome as other confit duck dishes I've had. The vegetables with it honestly made me think of slightly upmarket boiled school veg. The lemony potatoes with it ended up being the only positive aspect of that dish, other than the gravy which had a nice flavour. My partner had the burger and found the meat patty very dense and not pleasant. We had a banoffee pie which was fine.

Additionally, the ladies' toilet had "PUSH HARD" painted on the door, apparently indicating the door could be quite stiff. This just resulted in a cycle of people nearly breaking the door in (I mean this honestly - the lock looked like it was about to give and people outside cant hear people shouting from inside the toilet!), when it was simply locked and currently occupied, and then the same happening to them once they'd apologised to the previous occupant and they themselves went into the toilet. So that didn't add to the experience, either.

I had thought Little Bay's intended USPs were a quirky atmosphere but also great food given the type of dishes served and the online ratings. Perhaps I had misunderstood this because the reality was the quality of the food spanned quite a range with it mostly being quite poor. Most of the dishes appeared to have little care taken over them.

The interior is definitely unique and interesting and the service was good but I wonder if the quirky décor means people rate the food more highly than it actually is? I don't like leaving negative reviews but I wished I'd read a review like this before deciding to go! Definitely worth going if you're not too fussed about food quality but are interested in going somewhere a bit different. It also seemed pretty kid friendly.

To note, there should have been live music (Saturday night) but for whatever reason,...

I normally give one star when the food is bad. However, the customer service was amazing, they really see to your needs and help you in every way possible.

But I can’t help to feel that customer service is, as such, to massively compensate for the bad food. I’ve been to this restaurant twice and each time I leave disappointed with the food and happy with customer service.

The first visit was Christmas 5yrs+, we didn’t fancy cooking a massive meal and spending loads of time cleaning so as a family, we decide to eat out. Of course, Christmas was a busy day for all and the food was inedible, I was left massively out of pocket and no one could eat any of the meals. As this was all a distant memory and also a chaotic day. I gave them another try in April to attend a family event.

I ordered lamb and mash… oh my. It arrived salty, dry and somehow moist at the same time. I just can’t explain how this was achieved. My best guess is the meal was microwaved with gravy thrown on at the end. Lamb and mash is my go to meal as it’s near impossible to get wrong. Other meals were returned and all we could eat were the chips.

It’s a real shame about this restaurant, nice venue, staff and manager, but the menu is too large, meaning they are trying to cater for too many types of people and would need to find shortcuts to achieve this.

The one question everyone asks me is, what type of restaurant is this? French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, American diner or English pub. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even answer that question. I had to google them to find out it was a modern European restaurant. Perhaps they could have capitalised on that theme and have a popular dish from some European countries with a flag next to it explaining the food and culture.

This restaurant has so much potential… Now I understand what my school teacher meant by “you got potential, you just need to...

This is another charming restaurant in the Little Bay group, complete with the usual hallmarks of great service, fun, value for money, and fantastic, quirky interior design.

However on my last visit I was rather nonplussed that two dishes arrived completely different to those described on the menu. Our courgette fritters on polenta were simply pan-fried slices of courgette, no polenta or element of 'fritters' in sight, and my main of sea bass with artichoke hearts, potatoes and a carrot and cucumber salad was entirely missing the artichokes and salad, though green beans were present....unfortunately I'd also ordered greens as a side which were broccoli and....green beans.

If you run out of ingredients and plan to swap some other ones in, let your customers know when they order, so they can decide? Further, if the swapped-in item is same as the side-dish, it's obviously not right to not even mention it in advance? And if the customer politely mentions all this when the waiter asks how the meal was, perhaps offer to remove something from the bill? Otherwise, what's the point in the waiter asking? We paid for dishes we didn't quite receive?

I should add that I still enjoyed the food, it was absolutely fine. But it wasn't what was on the menu, and the missing items were quite significant (I was particularly looking forward to the artichoke element, for example.)

I hope this was just a blip and that things will be back to normal on...