Sans Patrie — Restaurant in Nottingham

Very disappointed. I was really looking forward to this place based on the website content and reviews I'd read. I had imagined a relaxed intimate dining experience but it was far from it. There were too many things that collectively contributed to my 1 star review.

Firstly, albeit minor, is that there are 2 doors to the restaurant but only one was open. It was not obvious which was the door to use and none of the staff bothered to gesture which door to use, once we'd even established where the doors were. I watched everyone who arrived face the same confusion, and the staff just watched (maybe an in joke or maybe completely oblivious).

On entering i was struck by the noise. The space is an echo chamber. The only sounds you could hear from the music playing was some tinny top end and a constant thud thud thud, such were the dreadful acoustics. On top of that, the constant clanking and clattering of utensils, cutlery and pans from the kitchen area, which is part of the dining space, meant that diners had to raise their voices to hear one another. I'm sure this was ok for some, but it wasn't for us and I saw that it wasn't for others either. It really was a terrible distraction. Personally would have preferred some more relaxed music for dining, even if we couldn't hear it properly. It was as if we were in a very lively bar, and that wasn't the impression I took from the website.

Then the service. Oh dear. It was a drag. We were there for 3 hours!!!! The service was friendly, when it appeared, but it was painfully slow. 3 hours for 6 very small portions, meant we probably spent about 15 minutes actually eating and almost 3 hours waiting, and since the place so was noisy with the clanks of cutlery and thuds of tuneless music we were unable to just sit and chat whilst waiting far too long, because we just couldn't hear ourselves. The seats weren't particularly comfortable, but maybe that's because we were sat on them so long. The late evening sun shone into the restaurant, which was nice, but it did expose pretty unclean windows, which in turn drew my eye to the very sorry looking wilted and neglected plants hanging inside.

The beer I ordered at the start never arrived. It was almost impossible to attract the attention of staff to ask for more water, they only arrived to bring the next course. The service was really lacking and very inefficient. One staff member seemed to sense we were running out of patience and came to say they'd been really hectic, with everyone arriving at once; there were 9 occupied tables, of which 6 only had 2 people at each. There were a lot of 'where's the food' looks over shoulders. Why on earth we had to be there for 3 hours I just don't know.

The food was nice, and so were the wine pairings, but the mango pallette cleanser, the size of a small shot, was a bit of a stretch to be counted as one of the 6 courses of a tasting menu. We left hungry and in-between thuds if music I overheard another couple expressing their discontent at the service and that they were still hungry. .

Had to ask for the bill twice.

This place has all the trappings to be excellent but it fell far short. A real shame as I was looking forward to visiting each time the menu changed, but I'm afraid even if the service improved the acoustics were awful and I'm not sure much could be...

So myself and 5 family members had the 6 course tasting menu with wine pairings. I’ll start with the good bits! The staff are really friendly and made a good effort. The meat courses (as reviewed by my family members) were quite nice. The wine servings are generous. The restaurant also took off our first drinks off the final bill which was good of them.

Now I would say the restaurant is somewhat chaotic. It’s loud, and an open restaurant with a small kitchen / bar and circa 8 staff trying to navigate round reach other. Takes a while to get used to. Once we were about 4 glasses of wine in (and we ourselves were loud!) we were ok!

If I’m being honest (and we fed back internally to the waitress), the vegetarian options were pretty poor. The mushroom soup was good, the potato fondant was quite nice (even though it was very small), but the rest of the meal was below par.

We were served huge amounts of sliced vacuum pack beetroot with a bit of caper, balsamic, watercress and limited feta. I can make a better dish at home…

Likewise the main dish, a cauliflower (which had been boiled) and mushroom dish, was either incredibly over seasoned (so much salt, tasted unpleasant) or didn’t have any seasoning at all on my partners dish.

The worst bit is that we left our meal hungry… we spent £340 in total for 6 people (leaving an additional 10% tip as the staff were genuinely very lovely), but for circa £60 per person you can’t leave your guests feeling hungry… we all had to have some food when we got back home.

There is no cohesion between the dishes, some of wine pairings didn’t really go with the dishes…

A confusing night, but we had fun despite this. I would say the restaurant would be better to remove the tasting menu and just focus on creating a couple of good dishes with some of the nice wines they have.

So overall and on balance I wouldn’t go again. I would also advise other vegetarians to be wary if they...

My partner and I went to Sans Patrie for our anniversary. On arrival, we sat down and couldnt hear eachother speak. My partner asked if the music could be turned down (we are both in our 20s so hopefully still have good hearing). The staff member appeared confused and did turn down the music a fraction, but we limited the talk because we couldn't really understand eachother. It was a sunny day and it was very bright too. I brought the wine pairing and my partner (who doesn't drink) brought soft drinks. We felt forgotten about most of our meal, we waited +30 minutes between each course. The wine pairing was served later than the dishes and the waitress brought two servings even though we had only ordered one. One of the courses was missed out completely and then when we asked about why we hadn't had it... the waitress picked up a plate that had been sitting on the side for our whole meal and gave it to us explaining that they were doing things in a different order that evening. The plate was what I could only describe as a lump of cheap smoked salmon with rice crispies on top. The bill came to + £50 each. We felt very disappointed by the whole experience and wished we hadn't come on our special day. I understand staff shortages happen, mistakes do happen, but we felt like we were treated like fools. Perhaps serving standard plates of food would be better if the restaurant staff are unable to cope with the schedule of a taster menu. The food for the most part was nice and so was the atmosphere. Bit of a shame we had such a bad experience mostly due to...