Six by Nico Spring Gardens — Restaurant in Manchester

EDITED: I gave this 4 stars a year or so ago.

This was supposed to be a special birthday meal for my daughter, as she turned 18 today.

I booked it before Christmas as it is Valentine's Day and knew that it would be busy, so we had been looking forward to it for a while.

I cannot express how disappointed I am in what I experienced today.

I had received an email from yourselves on the 10th February to confirm the booking, which I did and mentioned that my daughter was lactose intolerant and that it was her 18th birthday. Someone had clearly read this as there was a card on the table saying 'Happy Birthday', what they had not read was the lactose intolerance bit.

On arriving at 5pm today, which was our reservation time, we were seated at the table and the waiter asked if anyone had any allergies to which I replied that my daughter was lactose intolerant and she didn't like fish. So he said, 'No problem, we will swap out the fourth course for the vegetarian option', so I thought, 'Great'. Thankfully, we ordered some sourdough bread for starters, because after 30 minutes of waiting for the first course I mentioned to a waitress that we hadn't received our first course yet, whereas the next table on a similar time to us, were already on their second course. When the waitress came back she said that they were waiting for the lactose intolerant starter to defrost!!!!!! I really wasn't expecting that response. When the first course arrived after 40 minutes, I asked the waitress why it wasn't ready since I had confirmed on your booking emailed on the 10th February that we would be coming and that she had an allergy. Her response was 'We didn't know if you were coming or not and we didn't know what time you were coming'. Well, normally, if I book a table at 5pm at a restaurant, I will arrive at 5pm, and I had already confirmed that I would be coming as it's a special occasion. The first course was a slab of cheese with some fancy goop around it......40 minutes to wait for a slab of cheese! Come on people! I could have gone to Tesco's and come back and churned my own lactose intolerant cheese in that time! 40 minutes to defrost cheese!!!!!!!!!! An absolute joke!

After the third course the waitress cleared the plates and I had my knife and fork on the plate which was also taken away, so when the fourth course arrived I had to ask for a knife and fork. The attention to detail was just lacking throughout the evening. When I looked at my daughter's plate for the fourth course I thought that her food looked exactly the same as ours so I said that I would try it before her, just to check that it wasn't fish, well guess what, they gave her the fish dish, when they had explicitly said they would swap it out. My daughter at that point was so fed up she said don't bother telling them, but I thought, no i'm going to get them to change it because they had told us at the start and that is a whole course that she wouldn't have been able to eat. So they did thankfully swap the meal for the vegetarian option, by this point we just wanted to go home, but we had 2 courses left.

On receiving the bill you tried to charge me service charge which I flat out refused and mentioned the above problems. No-one bothered to ask us for more drinks or if the food was ok, the service was just really poor. The waitress did however remove the service, charge, donation charge and the sourdough starter which was some sort of a gesture.

The most disappointing thing is that I came to eat here about a year ago with my partner and we both thoroughly enjoyed it, barring one course which is why I gave it 4 stars, however, after tonight and having looked forward to it for months, I really cannot recommend this place. I do feel like it has ruined what should have been a special day and I am extremely disappointed on my daughter's behalf as this was somewhere I recommended. I will not be returning, no matter how often you change your menu, I just cannot sit through that experience and service again for the price that...

We've been waiting to try Six by Nico for a while but it was a real let down on this occasion. I don't think this is necessarily a bad place, I just think we had a bad experience.

A couple of points to this really (sorry in advance!):

The layout - The tables are so tightly packed in there. I know they have to maximise their covers, but I felt like the staff found it difficult to get around, because the tables were that close together. Guests were also all bunched together at the entrance not knowing what was going on, which was a bad first impression. Our table was situated near the bar at the back, which meant near the potwasher, who was throwing dishes around so loudly, you couldn't hear yourself think. A chef also dropped a tub of hummus on the floor and then proceeded to kick a door in anger about it... none of this should spill over onto the restaurant floor for guests to experience.

Staff - The staff are nice, but I felt undertrained for the environment they were in. We had around 5 different servers through the night, which is a little impersonal. I wasn't drinking, but my partner was and had the wine pairing. After our initial drinks, my partners wine pairing began and I ordered a second 0% beer. Despite my partner receiving 5 glasses of wine, my drink never arrived, and I was never asked at any point if I needed one. In the meantime however, despite not actually complaining about the previously mentioned potwasher noise, the staff must have realised it wasn't nice, because they brought us a complimentary glass of Prosecco. This was a nice gesture, so i'm not knocking that, but, a little more thought could have been spared for the fact I wasn't drinking before putting a glass of prosecco in front of me. I do usually drink (just having a night off), so not a problem for me particularly, but if I wasn't drinking for a particular reason, this could have been received quite negatively. If we had maintained the same waiting staff, perhaps this lapse in communication might not have happened. I just felt like it was a little chaotic, and the standard was more that of a pub than a restaurant. The desert was also described as a date cake with a crisp on top when brought out, which I found funny, and plates were removed with us being asked "Was it a ten ten, yeah?" - I think it is important for staff to have personality but maybe it was just a bit TOO informal? maybe that's just me.

Food - The food was okay. For the price, I guess there's some good value, but I definitely wouldn't call it high end in any way. It's plated as if it is, but I don't think there was much substance to it. I will caveat this part by saying we got the Istanbul menu, which isn't our favourite cuisine, and probably the overall experience mentioned above, detracted from the food itself too.. .but, that is the charm of the concept, that you don't know what you're going to get if you book way in advance like we did. I'll add to that, other tables did seem to like the food, so maybe that side of it was just us. To me though, it felt like someone had done hello fresh well and then just added a foam, or a twill and popped it on a nice plate.

I think improvements could be made in terms of layout (honestly, just get ride of that back row of tables), and maybe training, but I think this was just a bad experience for us. hopefully we'll try again and get a better night, maybe the Deansgate location next...

Visited for my mums birthday dinner. The lady who served us gave us some prosecco to celebrate my mums birthday which was a nice touch.

Overall , a nice experience. Id definitely come back! Only issue I had were my cutlery. Whenever I left my cutlery on the plate , as you would normally do after finishing a course, the waitress never brought me new cutlery until I asked. The whole dining experience sounded very "posh" and high ended at first but in reality , its more of a 6 course fine dining "style" at a normal restaurant so you dont need to worry about it being posh at all. The furniture at the restaurant was definitely not on the posh side (or fine dining) and this could be further confirmed with the table setting as you were only given 1 set of knives and fork with a spoon, all placed on 1 side of your seat. So treat this as a fancier normal meal :) .

We all ordered the normal 6 course menu but as I didn't like corriander, I asked for it to be removed from my dishes and the restaurant gladly amended my dishes.

Course 1: the yellow looking soup thing with white threads on top. This was surprisingly nice. Very light, delicate and refreshing. I really enjoyed the sauce/soup.

course 2: The one with the toothpick holding the prawn and spring roll together. This was also really nice. The prawn was fried nicely and pretty juicy. The kinchi spring roll was decent but not the best filling I've had - I think it was around a third of a normal mini spring roll in terms of size.

Course 3: the small bowl with brown liquid. The ox tail soup was very strong and flavourful (the soup was sweeter than I expected); combined with the noodles, it was really nice. Only issue I had was the saltiness. This dish was a bit too salty and I had to drink quite a bit of water to get rid of the saltiness.

Course 4: the dish on the black and white plate with a pakchoi. This was a fish dish and it was nice, I wouldnt say it was nicer than any other fish fishes Ive had so it was more on the normal side for me but still nice. The crispy wonton skin tasted nice and crispy.

Course 5: the one that looks like half a chicken breast along with a semi burnt orange coloured circle. Presentation wise, this one might've been the worst. In terms of taste, it definitely wasn't! The chicken breast was juicy and tender - not dry at all.

Course 6: the one with a rectangle block and something that looks like ice cream. I was really looking forward to the dessert but sadly it wasnt as nice as I expected. If anything, this was my least favourite dish (and I'm someone who loves my desserts the most) and I kind of struggled to finish it. I cant exactly descripe it but the taste just wasnt that great (this is pretty subjective) and even the cream (?) on the side of it, wasnt that great. It helped me finish the cake as without it, it would've been harder; but the whole dish just wasnt the best - a bit disappointed as I usually really enjoy my desserts but at the same time, I'm the most pickiest when it comes to desserts since I've had soo...