The Refuge — Restaurant in Manchester

All style, zero substance. Laughable experience.

Our party of 11 booked on for the Christmas set menu at a price point of £45 per head. At such a price point, one would expect a certain level of competence. How wrong we were.

Upon hearing that one of our party doesn't eat pork, our waiter told us that means she HAS to have the vegetarian option as no menu adjustments could be made. You'd think being unable to cater for Halal requirements would be something that you're informed of upon booking or that they could facilitate the seemingly straightforward task of ensuring the pigs in blankets are kept separate to the rest of the food whilst in preparation. Apparently not.

When bringing out the starters, it became apparent that there wasn't enough salmon for everyone. We queried this and apparently it was one small piece of salmon per person. However only 5 pieces of salmon appeared. Our waiter conceded that he did not bring enough and bought out one extra piece. When we asked where the rest was, he informed us that he had provided enough as it was 6 meat and 4 veggies. Apparently no pork means that you can't eat salmon, who knew? Also riddle me this, does 6 and 4 amount to the 11 in our party?

We finally confirmed that there were 8 meat eaters, one without pork and 3 veggies. So we asked whether we would now have the correct amount of starters. Our waiter laughed in our faces and walked off.

At this point, we're now 90 minutes into our meal and we've seen an incorrect starter and one order of drinks. Of all the places that one could be both hungry and thirsty, surely a restaurant should not be one of them. The lack of attention to our table was baffling, so much so that even taking the rather extreme and petulant measure of raising a hand like a schoolchild to attract a waiter didnt raise any questions to the staff.

We were informed that to make the adjustments for our party, we should expect a delay on the food so after about 1 hour and 45, the mains arrived. Underwhelming is the word. Already dehydrated from the lack of drinks service, the turkey sapped any remaining moisture from me. There was something that resembled a roasted carrot. Bland would be complementary.

I think the biggest kicker was that the venue wasn't even particularly busy as a level of justification. The whole time, I was expecting someone to jump out and tell us we were being pranked. The venue itself is very nice but if you're considering their Christmas meal,...

No. Just no.. If, like me, you love architecture and significant historical sites and care about nothing else, "Refuge" is the place for you. But if you came for the food, you'll leave angry and disappointed. We came to celebrate my sister's birthday and I was looking forward to a spectacular experience full of flavors and quality traditional British cuisine. Reading the menu, I realized that the concept of the restaurant is in the form of tapas, but with a very limited selection of dishes. We ordered a mix of everything and the food started to fill the table quite quickly. Unfortunately, the result was a quality at the level of below-average fast food. The Batatas Bravas were old, greasy, under seasoned and covered in a disgusting supermarket sauce. Fried cheapest mushrooms in batter fried in deep fryer were full of oil. The so-called the korean wings were a handful of miniature pre-frozen wings made from malnourished chicken and another disgusting artificial sauce. Old fries, burned to death in a fryer with burnt oil. Everything greasy, unhealthy and from cheap supermarket semi-finished products and few plates arrived even stone cold. Even the "free" Naan bread was just cold, dry and old. The final price absolutely blew me away. We paid over £150 for a few plates of above mentioned items. The only thing I liked was the fresh mint tea, but upon closer inspection I found out that even on the stupid tea they saved money and used mint that was obviously no longer fresh. (Dark leaves on pictures) I give the second star for the beautiful historic interior, the fragrant hand cream that is in the (broken) toilets (another shame) and of course the staff. The girls weren't the friendliest, as I'm used in England, but they tried to help us with everything. In addition, we were allowed to bring our own birthday cake and that was actually the only edible, high-quality and healthy dish. As an experience, fine, but as for the food, I'd rather eat a can of dog food than eat here again. Few of my reviews are rated less than 4stars, but here I don't have any other...

DO NOT GO HERE FOR A CHRISTMAS MEAL. The price was £45pp - for this amount of money, you'd expect excellent food and high quality service, which was the opposite of what we experienced. Yesterday night, the staff could not understand the dietary requirements of our party, even though we'd clearly explained them weeks in advance, and were told they could be catered for. This led to the staff consistently bringing out the wrong meals. When we questioned this, the manager was hostile, argumentative, and laughed at our requests - it was absolutely appalling behaviour. All vegetables that were served with the main meal (except maybe the potatoes) were ludicrously bland - it was difficult to tell what food we were even eating at times. The service was slow and empty glasses were left on the table for eons, even though the restaurant was not particularly busy (which says a lot, considering the day we went is probably the most popular day of the year for groups of people to go out for a Christmas event). We were sat down for about 90 minutes before our main meal was served. The reason I'm giving this establishment 2 stars instead of 1 is because the rude manager conceded that the service was poor enough to warrant a 50% discount for our food. Additionally, a different, much more professional manager served our table towards the end of this ordeal, and he was kind enough to also remove the cost of 1 bottle of wine from the bill. However, the staff still had the unbelievable AUDACITY to add a 10% service charge to our bill, which we promptly requested to be removed. The venue itself is nice, and I imagine it's a decent place to just have a drink, but what we experienced last night for our Christmas meal was...