Jute Café Bar — Restaurant in Scotland

Rediculously small portions re main course for a Christmas Eve celebration meal. Miserly small portions were served to us for dinner. From the mains on the normal menu, not the Christmas menu, we both selected braised ox cheek beef featherblade of beef with mash, bacon (which was literally non detectable on the dish), carrot and onion jus at £16:95 each. We were both very disappointed when it arrived at the table, it was a small lump in the middle of the plate with a few carrots around it. It should be on their lights meals section of the menu. It was like a decent sized starter. I have had a tapas dish with similar ingredients at another restaurant nearby which was easily the same size as this main course. It was a total rip off. I do also go to more expensive restaurants which can charge a lot but as long as you get a normal sized portion you don’t mind. When there is a starter menu, a lights menu and a mains menu to choose from, then you expect the main course selection to be a normal main sized portion. It was far from a normal portion, it was very small. I wish I had taken photos. After taking a bout 5 minutes to eat the dish we finished our bottles of Prosecco and realised no one was coming to ask how it was or if we wanted to order a desert. We then got our bill at the desk, as did not want to order anything further in case it was equally disappointing; not that a waiter or waitress came near us anyway as clearly there was a severe lack of staff. We will not be back to the noisy, disappointing and inattentive Jute Cafe - we left hungry and...

Was looking forward to a good birthday meal as I have had lovely meals here before, but we were extremely disappointed in the food this time.

I love food, and am not one for confrontation or bringing up problems with food in restaurants, however tonight was my first time doing so.

The starter was a dish of pita with humus and a salad. It was delicious so we had good expectations for the main course.

The parma covered pork fillet tasted strange, the dauphinoise potatoes were tasty but the meat was not enjoyable. Had a taste but left 75% of it. The rice in the thai green curry was dry and crunchy and the vegetables were overcooked. 90% of this meal was left.

After sheepishly complaining to the waitresses, they did come over and apologise and offer to recook the meal or see the dessert menu. We had a look but nothing took our fancy on the desserts and had lost our appetite for main courses. They said they would remove 1 meal from the cost (I think they didn't believe me that the pork tasted funny so complimented the Thai curry) and a complimentary dessert.

As I said, by this point, we had lost our appetites and were slightly embarrassed so just paid and left.

In summary, I will possibly go again but I really hope for better than this time. The staff were good and the food was quick and the 2 drinks we had were from a good selection on offer. The experience just left a bitter taste on an otherwise good birthday for...

Some serious staff training needed in hospitality. Service was incredibly slow and nonchalant throughout, ordered 4 adults mains and 1 kids meal on the app advertised to order through when seated outside, receive a conformation email that the order has been accepted. Time passes, 35 minutes in total before we go to the bar to ask about where the meals are to be told the app isn't working today. Why didn't they tell us when they gave us the menus or delivered drinks outside? So they manually take our order after a couple of 'sorry about that' etc etc. Kids meal we asked to come out ASAP as it was pitta and houmous which was relatively quick to be fair. 25 minutes after the order was manually taken head back in to ask where the mains are to 2 staff at the restaurant desk not doing anything 'the app isn't working' to which I noted we know and ordered manually after a 35 minute wait. They call the kitchen to work out where the food is, 5 minutes after this we receive the food which was OK but we were waiting on an additional side. At no point where apologies sincere, or were we offered anything for the inconvenience, just the impression it didn't really matter. Dine elsewhere if you are eating in the West End.

So many hospitality basics...