Villa Portstewart — Restaurant in Northern Ireland

I was so disappointed with how Villa had dealt with negative feedback that I felt obligated to write this review. After highly recommending this establishment to visiting family & friends, a table was booked & everyone was looking forward to catching up over dinner. Sadly, our party was drastically reduced due to Covid but the remaining few went ahead with the booking. I cannot fault the food. It was excellent from start to finish. The staff who served us our food & drinks were friendly & polite. Unfortunately, the restaurant supervisor was quite rude & unprofessional throughout service. Derek seemed to be in a hurry from the very start, from taking our initial drinks order & continuing right through to the end of service. He only informed us that he needed our table in 15 minutes when we had just finished our mains & had yet to choose from the dessert menu! Even when we were eating our desserts, he brought both the bill and then the card machine for us to settle payment. We vacated our table at the requested time only to find that our table was still empty 15 minutes later! Derek's clinical manner, his sharp tones & lack of warmth sadly put a dampener on what was otherwise a lovely night. My friend who originally made the booking received a feedback questionnaire from Villa a few days later. As an avid reviewer, she gave her honest opinions highlighting the poor service from Derek. The following day she received an email from Villa informing her that she was 'blocked' from making any future bookings. This email should've been sent to the reservations staff but mistakenly was sent to her. I'm extremely disappointed in the way Villa has dealt with everything. So when you ask for feedback from your customers, do you get instantly blocked for constructive criticism? Any other eating establishment would welcome such feedback if it helps them to make improvements in giving their customers that perfect dining experience but sadly not Villa. Don't ask for customer feedback if you can't accept negative comments. My friend also put up a Google review which has conveniently 'disappeared'. Obviously, they don't want anyone else to read a review that highlights their skulduggery behaviour. There are plenty of restaurants in the near vicinity that value customer feedback but this isn't one of them. I've always recommended Villa to visiting friends & family but because of the way in which they handled this situation, I regretfully will not be doing so...

We went here a couple of weeks back. I forgot a face mask and had to buy one from the confrontational yet vertically challenged doorman.

Said doorman then refused entry to one of our party who was medically exempt from wearing a face covering. He claimed that it is a ‘private property and the owner has decided no one comes in without a face covering’. Regardless of what one thinks of the efficacy of wearing a face covering, to discriminate against someone for not wearing one violates several discrimination laws.

We got over this hurdle by the discriminated party agreeing to pull a scarf over their mouth to walk to the table.

Once inside things sadly didn’t improve. Once we had ordered we waiting over 1 hour for our meal to arrive. This was due to it ‘taking longer than expected to cook my fish dish’, perhaps they had to catch it first?

Other tables which had arrived after us had ordered, ate and left by the time ours arrived. We asked to cancel the dish and take it off the bill but this was refused. Having worked in hospitality growing up (at this venue no less) it is not uncommon to offer this or at least a complementary drink as a gesture of good will for the long wait.

Hoping the food would be worth the wait, sadly we were disappointed again as it definitely wasn’t. I’ve had much better for much less from the local takeaway. Which we will go next time rather than darken the door of this establishment again. It is a shame as I have fond memories of this establishment growing up and have enjoyed numerous meals at the place. We would much prefer to support local independent businesses than large chains especially since the pandemic but we will not be returning here.

I would advise anyone who is exempt from a face covering to...

If I could give negative stars I would have. This was one of the worst meals I’ve ever eaten.

We were staying locally and came here for a meal.

For starters we had the duck, prawns and nachos between us to share. The duck had so much hoisin so was extremely salty. The batter on the prawns was so thick, more like a fish and chip batter, not for prawns. You couldn’t actually taste prawn anywhere in there. Weirdly the nachos were with bolognese rather than chilli. The nachos and bolognese themselves were the nicest part. The cheese sauce, again was very salty.

For mains, most of us had burgers. I had mine without the bun. When it arrived the plate was swimming in grease. The burgers were like cheap food van burgers. I couldn’t bring myself to finish mine as it was so disgusting. I ate about a quarter of it before giving up. The chips were very pale and lacked any flavour. If you wanted any dips (mayo, etc) to be able to eat your chips with they charged an additional 75p!!!

The chicken peanut Asian salad came with a weird sauce that barely tasted of peanut and the Asian salad was not an Asian salad. It consisted mainly of rocket!

The waiting on staff we had was lovely and she was very apologetic. I spoke to the manager on the way out who could not care less that we’d had an awful experience. There was no offer to reduce our bill, despite most of the food being inedible. He said we should have let him know earlier and he’d have swapped our food. There wasn’t anything we would have wanted swapping to that they could have cooked.

As I left, my stomach was in agony from the amount of grease I had consumed. I felt ill.

If you value your taste buds and care at all about your stomach avoid here...