The letter below was sent to the owner of the Cotton House Mr K L Lee on 13th March 2024 and has yet I have not not received a reply. Mr Lee has received this letter, it was sent by recorded delivery and he signed for it on receipt. I am not looking for any kind of compensation, all I'm asking is for Mr Lee to at least acknowledge my complaint and provide an apology for ruining my wedding anniversary night out.

Dear Mr Lee,

FORMAL COMPLAINT – REF: THE COTTON HOUSE RESTAURANT, LONGCROFT, BONNYBRIDGE

I attended the above restaurant with my wife on Saturday 3rd February 2024, it was the occasion of our wedding anniversary, I am afraid the whole evening was very disappointing, to say the least. Let me outline the chain of events.

We arrived at the restaurant at the pre booked time of 8.30pm, it was busy, as it usually is on Saturday night, we were promptly directed to our table and ordered drinks and about five minutes later the drinks arrived, plus prawn crackers, and about five minutes after that we placed our order. I can’t remember exactly what we ordered for the main course, but we both ordered Dim Sum Soup for the starter.

So far so good, after 20 mins no sign of our order, no explanation volunteered from the table staff regarding the delay. I personally got off my seat and asked the waiter, what had happened to our order, he said there had been a mix up in the kitchen, so I said could we please have our soup at least, he said he would do this.

After a further 15 mins, still no soup, we are both getting very annoyed and hungry and once again I had to get off my seat and asked the same waiter what is going on and by the way where’s our soup, he said he would get out

After waiting another 5 Mins, and noting that the people on the next table who arrived well after us were having their main course, we decided we had waited long enough for our food and left, having first offered to pay for the drinks, the waiter looked flustered and said it was not necessary.

The fact we waited 40 minutes and received no food is bad enough, although I accept that sometimes things don’t go smoothly, however, I probably would not be writing this letter of complaint if someone had apologized for the wait, explained to us, unprompted, exactly what had gone wrong and, in the meantime, made some effort to serve the soup, or offer more prawn crackers, more drinks maybe, etc, etc… The waiter who served us was hopeless, whether he was incompetent or had not received sufficient training, only you can answer that. I am not putting all the blame on the hapless waiter, because there was a member of staff who looked as if she was supervising the table service and she walked past our table on several occasions and must have noticed that we were waiting for our food, she just ignored us.

I should explain that my wife and I have dined at the Cotton House on several occasions and, before the latest visit, we have always enjoyed excellent food and excellent table service, so it is quite an achievement to go from a 5-star rating to a no star rating, how else could we rate your restaurant when we get no food and poor table service, especially on our wedding anniversary.

I look forward to hearing from you

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Hallows

PS: I would have made this complaint much sooner, but I have been out of the country for the past 4 weeks.