Ego at The Punchbowl, Sefton, Liverpool — Restaurant in Sefton

I had a meal booked this evening for 20 adults and 3 children for my aunties 50th birthday celebration. It was an absolute farce. As we had such a large party we pre booked our meal choices. We booked this meal mid March given the menus etc when we pre booked our food we were told the prices had gone up by quite a considerable amount. We were told to arrive by 5.45 and food would be served by 6. My son age 2 is type 1 diabetic and has to have insulin before he eats so his blood glucose levels do not increase past a normal level. As I knew the food was coming at 6 I administered his medication so this did not happen.  The food did not come at 6pm it didn't start coming out until at least 6.40 at this point my son had started to go into hypoglycaemia and I had to give him treatment to stop his blood glucose levels dropping further.  All of the adults had been given and mostly finished their starters and i had to ask for the childrens, I have never been to an establishment that feeds adults before children! When they did eventually come they were piping hot and couldn't be touched for another 10 minutes.

My mum went to the bar to get her and my other son age 7 a blackcurrant and soda. The bar tender said £6.75 she questioned this and said £6.75 for a pint and a half of blackcurrant and soda he said yes. She gave it to my son he's drank half of this (as 7 year old do) and said mum this tastes funny. I tried it, you had given my son cider and black despite being questions around the price and the blackcurrant and soda.

Main meals came out again long wait on this and again children's meals left until the very end. The waitress asked if we still wanted desert a few of us said no at this point we had waited way too long for both starters and mains and didn't want to wait any longer.

She asked what i wanted for the children. I asked for 2 bowls of ice cream 2 scoops for my eldest and 1 scoop for my youngest again as he is diabetic I had administered insulin for 1 scoop of ice cream. Low and behold the deserts come out for several adults who had said no to the waitress and my eldest ended up with sticky toffee pudding and a separate ice cream. My youngest got 2 scoops of ice cream which meant I had given him the wrong amount of insulin for the ice cream negatively impacting his glucose levels.

The bill came and you had the audacity to put a service charge on the bill, the bill was paid as we did not want to impact my aunty's birthday meal anymore. The service was terrible, not once were we asked if we were OK, if we needed anymore water for the table. It was an absolute disgrace, it was an expensive meal and not once did we feel like...

Unfortunately not the best experience this time round, I have been 4 times now and previous visits were excellent, good service , good food and atmosphere. Unfortunately this evening was a very big let down. Service was painfully slow, We Sat at table at 7.30 - Drinks ordered 15 mins later - Water glasses did not arrive with our drinks and then ignored until past 8.30 when the food order was taken - only then could I ask for glasses to drink out of. !! A one hour wait to take a food order is totally unacceptable, I should know being the proprietor of various restaurants which have been trading for 40 plus years. There also seems to be an air or arrogance from a member of staff which I will not mention but overal also the staff did not seem to care also All looked fed up and disinterested… Most dishes were good apart from the Paella which was very undercooked - both rice and veg. Not once in the 2 .5 hours did one server ask how is everything or do you need anything, LITERALLY nothing, pretty standard practice in any hospitality venue. I don’t like to leave negative reviews but on this occasion I feel I have to point out some very serious failings - It’s a slippery slope downhill for any establishment should these failings start to become a regular occurrence. I’ll put this down to maybe a one off but it has very much put me off going again and for sure I would not...

Have dined here quite a few times over the years and especially for family birthdays. Using online booking system, originally booked 1 table for 6,but then wanted to increase number to include sister's family but system would only allow me to book another table for next time slot, but I explained that both bookings needed to be linked as celebrating my mum's birthday. When we arrived the server abruptly informed us that we weren't sitting together as comments only looked at on that morning and no space available. Whilst I accept there are limitations, it was more the manner this was delivered along with no prior notification to enable us to decide if wished to continue a celebration at different tables. When seated, the tables weren't even in a vicinity to socialise easily. Food was decent, but everyone's onion rings were cold and chips lukewarm. The final bill was incorrect, which I'd never normally even check but did on this occasion due to splitting. When staff finally worked out error and corrected, there was no apology. I'm not normally a hard to please customer and happily go with the flow, rarely complaining, but just felt the the overall attitude of team was brusque and surly, not what we would normally receive and made a family get together disappointing,...