Kelvingrove Café — Restaurant in Scotland

Avoid! For a bar named after such a key location, you would expect something of an institution, but alas that is, most certainly, not the case.

Upon entry on a Saturday evening we were coldly greeted by staff - who appeared, at best, distracted and at worst jittery. We opted to take a seat outside as the day was still young and the air warm, but went 10 minutes without service.

My partner went inside to order and was yelled at by a bartender behind her: “I am carrying drinks!”. Standard fair for a bar, but unnecessarily aggressive and, quite simply, unfunny.

The same bartender then delivered our drinks. Best described as a plump english woman with an insufferable accent, faux sincerity, and terrible service skills. She informed us that if we needed her again we were just to “click our fingers”. Again, unfunny, but this time with palpable passive aggression. For transparency’s sake, this bartender was horrendous and should be sacked.

A dramatic overstatement to the casual reader, but so pungent was her putrid service that me and my partner spent our time drinking the average cocktails we were served simply decompressing from 30 seconds interacting with her. Truly, I wouldn’t wish her on my worst enemy.

But, moving beyond the service, the drinks were average and severely overpriced. Large ice cubes do not disguise a hastily blended drink. £10 down the drain.

We found much more interesting drinks, attentive service, and enjoyable ambience across the road at The Crescent.

Put simply: AVOID! AVOID! AVOID! And sack that terrible...

MONEY STOLLEN BY STAFF. MANAGEMENT DONT CARE.

My girlfriend and I came for drinks here. My girlfriend had in her possession a birthday card that contained a large amount of cash. The card was from her uncle who had written it on his deathbed. Unfortunately we left the card on a seat at Kelvingrove Cafe. When we inquired the next day to see if the staff had found it, we were told that they had and the staff even described the card being in a yellow envelope and with my girlfriends name on it. Then, all of a sudden the card and cash had somehow disappeared. The manager immediately became defensive and offered no apology or seemed to care. My girlfriend even said that whoever had taken the cash to just keep it as she just wanted the card from her uncle who has now passed away.

The staff admitted to finding it, then it disappeared. Clearly someone has felt the cash in the envelope and made off with it. These things happen and whoever made the poor choice to steal will think again.

The real problem here though is how this was handled by the management. No one was sorry. No one seemed to care. This was theft and the manager made no attempt at investigating. Nothing was offered as compensation. The manager even got confrontational at one point on the phone.

It was all quite shocking and Kelvingrove Cafe showed absolutely no care towards the customer. It was a sensitive matter that involved the loss of my girlfriends uncle but that did not seem to matter at all.

The owners of Kelvingrove Cafe should investigate what happened here...

I'd been to Kelvingrove Cafe once before, a few months ago and had a great time, but had forgotten it's name so it was by happy coincidence that this was where the ladies and I chose for our first stop on our wee Glasgow nightlife tour. To be honest I think we started with the best. The place was full when we arrived, but the lovely server took our contact details and said she would let us know when a table was free, though it might be 40 minutes. Turns out we were in luck and 5 minutes later we had our booth by the window. Perfect! Now I recognised the place, there was only one thing on the menu I was having-the 3 sliders!! The other three chose the same, and with a pick of 9 to choose from, we pretty much covered them all. My out and out winner was undoubtedly the lamb with goats cheese and aubergine compote though Alex preferred her lobster with cocktail sauce, the pulled pork burger was also a winner. They were definitely filling enough, with a side of truffled fries (hell yes! ). I can't remember which cocktails the others had but there were certainly no complaints, and my Barrel Old Fashioned was one of the best I've ever had. Cool atmosphere, buzzing, really friendly and helpful attentive staff - 10/10 would go back. I'd probably walk back to Glasgow from Edinburgh for another of those...