The Olive Tree Oxford Street — Restaurant in Southampton

My girlfriend and I went here for Valentine’s Day and I cannot overstate how much we regret that decision. To start off with, the pricing was absurd for the product that we should have gotten (more on that later). £55 each for an appetizer, entree and desert is about the price you’d expect to pay at a high class establishment and this place is anything but. The ambiance is fine but nothing special, and they kept switching songs when something would come on the playlist that they didn’t want to play. As far as service goes, everyone was friendly but not attentive (again, more on that later). The food itself was exceedingly average. Both our entrees were fine, but the steak dish that we had was vastly undercooked (ordered it mid-rare and got it somewhere between blue-rare) and with a side we hadn’t asked for since by the time they got our dish out they’d run out. As for the deserts, the sticky toffee pudding was fine, but the chocolate with strawberry salsa was a mistake. The strawberry salsa was overpoweringly bitter and made the entire dish a bit dreadful. All of that would have still made for an ok enough dining experience, except that the staff made a major error on our visit and did nothing to remedy it. We ordered all 3 of our courses about 2 minutes after a couple next to us, and received our appetizer only a minute or two after them. After this we finished our appetizer and watched as they received their entrees and we received nothing. 30 minutes passed and we still had nothing and neither of us had spotted a server in just as long. Finally around the 45 minute mark we found someone (not our server) and asked what was happening with our food. He checked and came back and apologized, saying the kitchen had lost our ticket and it would come out shortly. 20 minutes after that (more than an hour and a half after we had arrived) we finally received our food. And, as I noted above, the meat was cooked incorrectly and one of the sides we had ordered before our 60+ minute wait had run out and had to be replaced by something else. Mind you across this whole period, our server had never once come to check on us or our food, and when it finally came out he didn’t even acknowledge the mistake on their end. Our meal concluded with the underwhelming deserts I’d mentioned before, and the restaurant did nothing to acknowledge or apologize for their mistake. I’m not one to ask for handouts, but given this meal was for a special occasion and a mistake on their end had resulted in a less than special dinner, it would have been appropriate to, at the very least, apologize for the massive delay. The food and service were both thoroughly underwhelming and for the price point this is resoundingly the worst meal I’ve had. Had it been 50-75% of the price I would’ve given 3 stars, but you can’t charge near 5 star prices and deliver 3 star food and service. I’ve given 2 stars because their normal menu pricing seems like it would probably be fair for the food and experience. But for special occasions, your time and money would be better spent at a spot where you know what you’ll...

Came here for dinner as a walk in from Ocean Village. The design and location of the restaurant are good and the service friendly. That’s where the good stuff ends though as the kitchen was a total let down. We had calamari and cauliflower starters which were OK, although the popcorn cauliflower was on a bed of thick, stodgy curry paste which made a mess of the dish. Our main courses were very poor though. Two of us had the mussels special which were some of the worst I have ever eaten. Tough, dry, tasteless and chewy. I’ve absolutely no idea what the kitchen did to make them so bad - maybe left them in an oven for half an hour. They were bad but at least not off. The mushrooms on toast we also ordered was thick, stodgy, salty and pretty horrible too. Tellingly, by far the best dish we ordered was the sourdough bread but I guess this is because they buy it in and can’t really mess that up. The drinks we ordered took a long time to arrive as well. The atmosphere was marred by a very noisy Charter Yacht company table next to us. They were the epitome of a toxic, male dominated, staff night out. They were drunk, loud, inconsiderate and utterly unable to see the impact they had on the lone female staff member they had on the table of 10 (+9 men) and their fellow diners. I guess this is not the restaurant’s fault but it did ruin the atmosphere. £120 for 3 people for not that many dishes or drinks. Food was bad and the atmosphere not great either. We won’t be back despite the location and I’d recommend you try almost anywhere else until some changes are made to the kitchen as other reviews seem to be saying the same thing (wish I’d read these before...

The worst restaurant I’ve been to in a long time if not ever! Under cooked risotto, over cooked, inedible fish and the rudest restaurant ‘owner’ I’ve ever encountered!! We came for a nice evening, my sisters have young children and this was a long over due girls night, our waiter (who we later found out was the owner) was rude, condescending and had an answer for everything!! We did chat to him about his awful attitude, to which he replied that he’d done 450 covers that day, I understand working in hospitality is hard but no one deserves to be spoken to the way he did to us, especially paying customers. He always needed the last word and when we told him we weren’t happy with the food his response was ‘why didn’t you tell me earlier’ in a very pissed off tone. It’s very sad that he clearly has no passion for his job or business. His attitude is just not what you expect at a restaurant, and maybe he just start hiring nice, personable people and he should take a step back from waiting. Service was also ridiculously slow, it took over 20 minutes for us to get our first drinks, we then found out they didn’t even have what we had ordered, so had to wait even longer for replacement drinks!! It was a shame that we spent I rare child free evening in such a negative environment. We will not be returning and I warn anyone thinking of booking to book somewhere else, it is not worth your...