The Gardeners Restaurant — Restaurant in London

We came here as a group of 4 for lunch. Although the cafe looked presentable at first glance, our experience quickly went downhill.

Food: The food was particularly dreadful & the worst part - expensive yet underwhelming. I ordered a cheese toastie, but instead received a plain basic untoasted butterless cheese sandwich after over 20 minutes of waiting (mind you, this item cost £8.50). We ordered a hunter's chicken, which took 30 minutes to arrive & then arrived cold as though it had come out of a fridge. When we ordered a replacement, it arrived a further 15 minutes later without the sauce. The chicken sandwich was bland & disappointing for the high price. The menu did not indicate any dietary information (vegan/vegetarian/allergens/etc) and lacked good vegetarian/vegan options. The hot chocolate was alright, but the coffee was tepid. The jacket potato was undercooked & hard.

Atmosphere: Nice enough to begin with, until we settled in and begun the long wait for our food. People were regularly getting up to complain - customers had issues with the mash, with items missing from their orders & many other customers besides us were visibly upset. It seems that the kitchen must have been understaffed or overwhelmed, as the quality of food just wasn't up to parr & wait times were absurdly long, even though we came after the lunch rush & there were plenty of empty seats.

Service: The service was ok - the waitresses were doing their best to bring out orders, man the till & serve their customers. However, the strain they were under was visible - between having to field all the customer complaints & repeatedly bring back incorrect orders to the kitchen, they were stretched thin and unable to clear the tables, refill the water jug & keep things running smoothly.

Overall, I wouldn't go here again & would recommend trying out one of the several other cafes nearby. To the management: I'd implore you to look into these issues, as we are very much not the only diners that have had such a...

Should have read the reviews beforehand. I ordered a sandwich which they clearly weren’t happy to make for me, no butter on the bread, no side salad and no coleslaw, just a sad dry sandwich on a plate… it was £5.20, even with salad and coleslaw this is a ridiculous price. When I went to the counter and said I didn’t have any salad and coleslaw, I just got an ‘oh’ and it was passed to a lady in the kitchen to sort out. My poor mum and grandma were no better off with the panini’s they ordered, ‘Brie, Rocket and Cranberry’…It was basically a cranberry sauce panini, the Brie was just small pieces of rind scattered between the bread. Once again those Panini’s were £6.40 each!! Absolute rip off, no care for their customers and we were not the only ones dissatisfied. This visit ruined a big part of our day out together and for that reason we will never come here again!! Save your money and energy,...

We popped in for a cup of tea and a bite to eat and decided to try the Welsh rarebit sandwich on the menu. We ordered two portions of Welsh rarebit, a portion of chips, a scone, and two cups of tea—coming to over £30, so we expected something decent.

Unfortunately, the experience was disappointing. The scone was heavy on bicarbonate of soda, giving it an unpleasant aftertaste. As for the Welsh rarebit—it was just grated cheddar, heavily mixed with mustard, toasted on two slices of plain white bread. This was more like an overpriced cheese toastie. For the price, the quality just...