The Cafe Bar — Restaurant in Preston

Date of visit: 30/04/22

Ordered: Pizza George + Spinach Pasta

The café is quite hidden away from the street but has a nice atmosphere in terms of outside seating, reminiscent of a summer holiday abroad.

We were greeted by a polite waitress who explained where to wait to be seated and whether outdoor seating was available, which it was. We spoke to another lady inside the café who seated us and provided us with menus.

Service had been relatively quick in terms of taking our order, drink delivery and food delivery.

Unfortunately, it appears that the employees focus too much on indoor seating customers. After serving our drinks no staff member came outside until our food was ready. Once our food had been delivered to the table, no staff member came out for the remainder of our visit.

As no staff member came outside from the point of delivering our food, to the point of us going inside to pay, we did not receive a food checkback asking how our food was and whether there were any issues. After tasting the Spinach pasta there was too little parmesan and the base sauce was incredibly watery much to the dissatisfaction of my partner. With no checkback and no employee coming outside, we were unable to ask whether any parmesan would be available.

After waiting for a period of time to see whether we would be asked to pay, we decided to get up from our table and walk inside. The person who greeted us in the café at first thought we were fresh customers, indicating how little notice they had taken to our custom in their outdoor eatery. We requested to pay, did so and proceeded to leave, noticing that a communal bowl of parmesan is made available inside, though as we had not stepped foot inside until now, were unaware of this being available.

The café has potential, but forgetting about customers in the outdoor seating area caused the visit to be disappointing. The pizza dish was enjoyable but it appears that the spinach pasta dish is made in a rush, as separately wilting the spinach would likely allow for a less watery...

A charming looking courtyard which looks ideal for an al fresco jaunt on the rare but so-welcome occasions that the sun breaks through the perma pall that hangs over the West Lancashire plain.

The first warning sign is indoors. As appealingly Andalucian as the courtyard appears, the interior just looks unconvincingly cheap on the finish. Next: an over-long, over ambitious menu. Who really needs 40-50 choices? Few kitchens can reliably cope with that, much less serve up something memorable. And so it proved.

On my visit, it was perhaps a third full, but noisy- though that may have been down to the character of customers rather than the acoustics.

The food was ok, though the only things I can remember are over-battered calamari. There is very poor quality waiting service: catching the staff's eye was a chore.

Worse: by the time our mains had been lying finished for 15 minutes and dessert or coffee might have been required, the restaurant manager had moved off to an out-of-sight annexe, the better to enjoy his 21:30 supper.

The remaining server, a barman in our line of sight, missed five minutes of gestures. In the end, I had to go to him, result: no further orders, and an average but acceptable experience had by now turned sour. Accordingly: no tip.

Conclusion: a well situated venue; but done on-the-cheap, and let down by very poorly trained, ill-led...

Visited here yesterday (Saturday) for lunch with my son. Nice surroundings, amazing what they’ve done to make a small courtyard feel very welcoming and pleasant. We both ordered the mussels as a main, with chips and salad, and a focaccia bread between us. Waitress didn’t seem to understand my pronunciation of “Moules Mariniere” or wasn’t familiar with the menu, but we got the right items ordered eventually. Food service was quick and the food was hot and looked nice. Mussels tasted a bit bland had thickly sliced onions in the sauce which were undercooked but still edible. Think these should have been much finer diced and fried off more so they melted into the sauce (like the French do it). The chips were hot and fresh and the salad was nicely dressed. The focaccia tasted nice but was a thin flatbread about 1/2 cm thick, not a fluffy doughy bread like it should be. Overall, we finished our plates, so not a bad meal but not the best. Prices were quite reasonable, £40 for two lunches including drinks. Would go back again but definitely try something else...