Slug & Lettuce - Newcastle Under Lyme — Restaurant in Newcastle-under-Lyme

I’d been to a Slug and Lettuce in Coventry in 2022 and had a beautiful experience, so I was excited to try my local. Sadly, it failed on all levels last night.

A group of 19 of us paid a £5 deposit each to secure our spot for a bottomless brunch, arriving to find Prosecco on the table and with high hopes for a good night.

We placed our drinks order and each time they arrived, I can honestly say, there were a few swaps between the party as none of us could identify what they were, apart from the guy who ordered bottled lager.

We’d all been to a bottomless brunch together before in Stone and were raving about the flavours and quality of the night. Nothing tasted right at S&L and for 19 people to all have puzzled expressions each time they tasted their cocktails, numerous swaps to be made for reassurance our tastebuds weren’t failing us, was not the night we were hoping for.

A cocktail that had strawberry purée in it tasted like rotten fruit. Maybe it was. It was a 30c evening and fresh ingredients might have perished in the time it took to make them. The espresso martini tasted like a warm wet fart and was only reluctantly consumed, by those wanting a caffeine hit to try and counteract the drag of what was transpiring to be a thoroughly underwhelming night.

Between these rounds, when the food arrived it was standard quality with no real complaints, hot and well presented so compliments to the chef, except for a promisingly delicious smelling chicken pasta dish that was swimming in an excess of oil.

As the night progressed tensions began to get a little high within the group, at such poor quality and service of the bottomless brunch. What was agreed between most of the group however, was that the organisation and quality of ingredients or speed of delivery of the drinks, could not be blamed on the scarcity of staff serving us. This is something that the owners of a well established brand like S&L need to address when advertising a bottomless brunch, especially when it attracts large groups. Our complaints were directed at a solitary staff member and after our second complaint, we decided this is not something she should be getting a headache over, all on her own, hence this review.

When our two hour allocated time was up, with an average of 2 drinks per person, due to the time it took to make the drinks, we all felt it had been a bit of a con.

Our bill arrived in the form of a 2 metre long receipt, to laughs between us and our server.

The bottomless brunch was advertised as £35.95 each so taking off the £5 deposit it came to £30.95 each to pay at the end of the evening. Now for clarity, and to be fair in this review, we had two non drinkers and decided to cover the upgrade we had agreed to between 17 of the 19 person party, as they didn’t benefit from it. Covering the £5 upgrade for two people (a tenner) between 17 drinkers would have amounted to us all paying an extra 50p or so and we agreed to just paying £1 each so we could quickly leave and move on.

Cue an absolute mess of an hour, with each member paying their remainder, only for the unfortunate server to deliver the news that there was still over £100 left on the bill. Many in the group tried to make sense of the bill, but between us and our server, we could make no sense of it, speculating if it was the Prosecco upon arrival that had incurred this unexpected excess on the bill. No answer was found and we all agreed we just wanted to leave and never come back, so a member of the group paid it off and we made a swift exit.

Before leaving, a party arrived and we went over to pre-warn them that if they were having a bottomless brunch, ask for clarity on what is included/price. Their reply? "Oh no we're just here for one drink. We've had a bottomless brunch here before and the final bill was way more than we thought and we just paid it but said we would never do it again!"

S&L, we came for "good times" but had the worst night we've ever had and paid through the nose for the displeasure. Employ more staff or it’ll be another failed venture...

Booked a table for half 6 for 6 of us for food and drink. There’s an option to order online so we all ordered our drinks through the app. We ended up waiting nearly 40 minutes for drinks to arrive. When ordering food we went to the bar and the staff ignored us and served other people at the bar who came up after us. When we tried to get staffs attention they were very rude and told us to wait. When someone finally took our order they couldn’t really be bothered to talk to us and asked us to write the order down for them to copy. When we went back to our table we ordered more drinks. One order of two drinks took over an hour and in the meantime we ordered more and that order came to us within 15 minutes. We asked our server if she knew where our other orders were and she didn’t know. We complained to the manager about 3 times whilst waiting for our order of drinks. We ordered our food at half 7 and our food didn’t come to us till about 10. We asked to speak to a manager again who was the only member of staff who seemed to care and wanted to listen to us and offered to comp our meal and gave us 3 bottles of Prosecco and a round of cocktails for the inconvenience. If we hadn’t ordered food then we wouldn’t have stayed. A girl in our group is gluten free and so we checked with our server that the halloumi fries were gluten free and they told us they were. We also asked for a sharing platter of gluten free nachos with beef. When the food arrived the halloumi fries had breading on which is obviously not gluten free and the sharing portion of nachos which is priced at £12 was the smallest bowl I’ve ever seen. When we challenged our server over this they made us feel like it was our fault and there was nothing they could do about it. In the end we asked for the manager over again and complained. The whole night was a shambles...

Little ambience for Saturday night, if you looking for a place with people ( we went around 11 at night) it might not be the place? Also music was a bit too loud, even outside in the terrace, the music was a bit annoying when trying to have a conversation with your friends in our opinion, also the girl serving the drinks with like colour hair, was really nice, and did a nice service, smiling a recommendation, but I think it was a bit of confusion and ending serving us, 4 drinks....for two people? I mean... I paid for then and drink( 3 of 4 actually coz one of them was not even tasting good to be honest, and had double hahahah) two of the same cocktails for two people?? I did not realise when paying, but when got them I was a bit confused 🤔 but anyway. She was really nice and had been nice and drinks were gonna get drank anyways? But I would have appreciated she double checking instead of just assuming coz we wanted one non alcoholic drink for me ( coz I drive and also don't drink alcohol) and my friend does, and we wanted the two for one that is the offer that they got for the alcohol cocktails, and you can not get one alcoholic and one non alcoholic with that offer....also, the boy at the bar ...a bit more smiling maybe would not be bad....you are serving at a bar, i think is the minimun when talking with someone is asking you if kitchen is open veeeery nicely.....thanks for the night. I might come back but I think I rather exploring new places. Who knows 🤔😉

Ps. also they were dirty glasses every when we first came in and noone came outside to clean tables on the 1h and a bit more that...