Vinoteca Farringdon — Restaurant in London

Starting with the positives the place has a great atmosphere, the wine was great and the food was up to par for a wine bar. We were initially served by young slim guy who was very polite and helpful.

Now for the disappointing part we had some friends joining at 10:30 who without knowing the place was closing at 11 ordered a bottle of wine and a cheese board. Then at 10:40 a waitress came for last orders when I ordered I large glass of wine which came at 10:45. A minute later a short waitress brought the receipt and at 10:50 she came with the card machine to get paid when we asked for more time and she replied with a rude attitude that we need to leave in ten minutes. This happened again when she came back five minutes later she rudely again told us we need to leave at 11.

Never have I been told to leave a place 5 minutes after getting the last order so we requested to speak to the manager who was a blond lady who came and told us again with an attitude that we came late and we should have known that the place closes at 11 and it’s our fault we came this late. I tried to explain to her that if waiters come for last orders they should allow at least 30 minutes for people to finish their drinks and in this whole time we were met with an extremely unprofessional attitude of this was our fault we can do you a favour by giving you another 15 minutes but you need to leave. Eventually the manager tried to remedy the situation by giving us a discount.

As I explained to the manager, when a client provides feedback at the very least you need to listen. If you disagree you can say you will take it into consideration and leave. The role of a waiter let alone a manager is not just to move plates around but to make sure customers feel heard and respected and tense situations are handled professionally. I understand we are human and we are doing the best we can but being polite and showing respect when someone is voicing their dissatisfaction is the bare minimum. Even if we were completely in the wrong giving us attitude and being disrespectful really doesn’t help.

Very rarely I write reviews let alone bad but I wanted to make sure the message comes across. Please do better and train your staff because before our night was ruined we really wanted to come back as we enjoyed the...

This would have been a 5-star but we had two good reasons to knock off two stars. Firstly, the food, the wine, fantastic. Great location, cosy venue (bit loud). The paddles are a nice way to sample a couple of different wines, would recommend if you go.

First Minus Star : We ordered a cheese selection and were asked if we'd like some additional house bread ordered with it, we said yes, it didn't come, we asked after it, it never came.

Second Minus Star : Upon payment time our receipt arrived with the aforementioned bread on it. One of our party went to the till and they sorted it right away. Then one of the servers came over to take our card payments and made as if the first persons payment hadn't gone through. The first person when to try paying again, same. Whilst this person tried to check why it didn't work a second person went to pay, £16, and was charged £60 (tapped and didn't realise). The first person then saw two charges on their account, they were rather annoyed. The server went back to the till to sort out the remaineder, came back and said only £22 remaining, which was too low. Person 3 paid that, at which point is when we realised Person 2 had been charged £60 instead of £16. I understand the 16-60 mistake in a noisy room, Person 2 should have checked the screen, but double charging someone and making out like it might not have gone through (might have been strong miscommunication, I want to give the benefit of the doubt) is very unacceptable. If we hadn't been checking and just paid our splits as we had all planned to, the Restaurant would have received over £100 more than it should have.

If this wasn't mostly the fault of just one staff member this would be a 1-star review, but the food and drink here is legitimately good. The service (apart from the missing bread) was otherwise...

We were there for a large group dinner in the private dining room, and I should say the rest of the party enjoyed their food. Sadly this was just the worst meal I've had out for a very long time. I was offered a milk free selection as an alternative to the limited menu due to me having an allergy. The starter wasn't awful (cold meats and bread) but was really oversized, and lacking in something to make it less dry. The main, however, was really terrible. It was roasted cauliflower with couscous - which had two major flaws:

1. The cauliflower was not cooked through so basically raw, it was really tough to even cut it with the knife provided.
2. The couscous was literally swimming in oil and basically inedible as a result. Not sure why it needed any oil at all, let alone a swimming pool of it! I mentioned it to the waiter and he shrugged and walked off with it but no comment or apology. Dessert was not a great favourite (rhubarb with lemon sorbet and almonds), the almonds really didn't seem to go with the flavour and the rhubarb was still quite tough to eat (needed a knife to cut it but only had a fork!).

For the price paid, it felt like a very poor meal and absolutely do no recommend here for anyone with allergies. They tried, but fell seriously short...