Atlantic Bar & Brasserie — Restaurant in Scotland

This was a difficult review. I was initially planning to give a 2 stars rating, however during the course of the evening had a couple of redemptions that made me up it to 3.

I’m in Glasgow on business for one night & wanted somewhere within walking distance of my hotel for dinner. As I felt like having escargots, I searched for highly reviewed French bistros in Glasgow city center & selected Atlantic.

After a long day at work, I was looking forward to the escargots, however was sorely disappointed by the snails the kitchen sent. I asked the waitress if they were fresh or tinned and, to her credit, gave me an honest answer: tinned. She offered to change my dish which I appreciated and went for their King scallops dish. The scallops were delicious, however was disappointed again there were only 2 tiny scallops for a £15 dish.

For mains, I ordered their butter poached cod dish and was further disappointed by the quality of the cod. Instead of being flaky and fresh, it seemed precooked & reheated (probably) using store bought frozen cod. With that said, the flavors of this dish are very good, only let down by the poor cod, which you don’t expect with a £25 dish. At this point, I was tired of complaining and, since the flavors were alright, just ate it.

As mentioned earlier, there were a couple of redemptions during the meal, the first was their fabulous cheese platter - which I had instead of dessert - with 4 varieties of delicious “ripened cheese with red grapes, red onion & apple chutney, dried date, Peter’s Yard crispbreads and Scottish oatcakes”. This was one of the best cheese platters I’ve had in a while; someone in that establishment selected everything on that plate with care & deserves much credit for it.

The second redemption was when I asked for the bill and found my scallops dish was deleted, presumably to make up for the tinned snails 🐌 This was also much appreciated.

In the interest of fairness, during the course of my meal, I saw several roast chicken dishes served to neighboring tables and these looked amazing. Moreover, the table immediately to my left ordered the Shetland mussels, which also looked very appetizing. Which leads me to conclude, the Atlantic does some dishes exceedingly well & think I was a little unlucky with my orders, however the fact remains that no self respecting restaurant should serve tinned snails or precooked...

On Tuesday mid-afternoon I visited your bar on St. Vincent St. with my wife for a quiet drink. Over the years we have visited your establishment with family and friends for both food and drinks and have always enjoyed the atmosphere and service.

Unfortunately, Tuesday was totally different. We sat down, ordered our drinks, but felt the staff were very ‘pushy’, frequently asking us if we wanted more drinks when our glasses were still quite full. Even the ‘presumed’ manageress joined in and we felt she was regularly looking over at our table, offering us her unwanted attention.

We did, in fact, order another drink and the manageress came over to ask if we wanted to order more. I said no as my wife still had a half glass of wine. Minutes later, the manageress came over and dropped the bill on our table, without any hint of an explanation.

This was strange for the following reasons. Firstly, she had not taken our order. Secondly, my wife still had a drink and, thirdly, we had not yet asked for the bill.

We were very frustrated at this unacceptable treatment, to say the least. I approached the manageress to ask if the bar was closing… it was only just over 5pm. She said no and I asked why we had been given our bill without asking for it. She presumed we were leaving as I had not ordered more drinks. She rushed away gauchely, without further intervention, leaving the hapless waitress to deal with her mess. I told the waitress to remove the discretionary 10% service charge, paid the bill, informing her that we would not be back. However, she did apologise and recognised that the ‘boss’ had caused this unnecessary scenario.

While I was waiting outside, the barmen explained to my wife your alleged, ridiculous policy of issuing a bill after the first drink or the second to keep tabs on drinks issued. No one else in your bar was asked to do this or had the bill dropped before them without an explanation during our visit. Your bills are surely computerised and this would take care of how much each table owed.

We can only assume that your manageress took a dislike to us for some unknown reason and, unilaterally, decided that we had to leave. This was pure discrimination and I will be posting a similar version of our most unpleasant experience on the...

Was taken here last night for a birthday celebration which was booked for 6pm. When greeted at entrance we were matter of factly told that there was another sitting at 8.As soon as we sat down we had 3 waitresses one after the other repeatedly asking for our orders.This carried on until feeling extremely rushed we ordered our food and drinks within the 1st 10 minutes. Our starters arrived and I must say the mussels were outstanding which was the only outstanding thing apart from the company I had shared .The chicken I had ordered was far to herby and rich definitely not recommended as well as the vegetables were still hard. Not enjoyable at all. No one came to our table to ask if we ready for our bill until 8.05 when my Aunt who had booked the restaurant was at the rest rooms.The same lady who greeted us came to the table and once again matter of factly told us there was another booking .I then answered saying we were well aware of this and we were just waiting for the return of our Aunt The lady then told us that we should rather wait for her by the bar.I then replied in saying we would wait by the table for my Aunts return.and asked for the bill.which she immediately brought to us .On my Aunts return she appeard straight away and ask could she bring our coats.

We were planning to stay and have a few drinks at the bar but due to the extremely unprofessional service that we received we left . I would highly recommend to management to rethink on how you treat your customers when overbooking and not treat them like a conveyor...