The breakfast club — Restaurant in St Albans

This was my second time visiting the place as I had really enjoyed the food the first time around despite service had been a tad slow at beginning but because the food was lovely I decided to oversee it and took this as a one off.

I then suggested to friends we eat there for a catch up.

When we arrived were not greeted or helped to sit and we could hear a family complaint on arrival.

We had to ask twice for menus as we had been ignored for at least 10 mins due to staff chatting or eating lunch and instead of coming to us they proceeded to serve other customers who walked in. Also we didn't have knives and forks despite them filling every other table constantly.

Bear in mind there was 4 servers on floor and the cafe wasn't very busy.

We finally got a drinks order which we waited a while for and the drinks were brought out one by one rather than ideally all served in one go so by time we all got drinks some of us had already drunk them.

The drinks weren't hot which was a shame which one of us sent back.

After waiting again for food order to be taken there was another complaint by another table on the quality of their dishes.

We then waited over an hour for four meals which we then had to chase as by then we were pretty much the only table left in the cafe.

By time food came it was pretty dry (mine was ok) but friends orders had clearly been sitting out for a while.

They had one of the orders wrong which needed to be changed and this then still wasn't right once supposedly fixed which was awkward for my friend as she couldn't eat the food items she did not ask for as she is expecting and food needed to be thoroughly cooked even after 2nd attempt it was still not correct so friend decided to just eat what she could as by this time she was starving.

It had got to the point we were pretty fed up and tired of waiting and just wanted to finish.

The servers were heard complaining to the chef about the mistakes but made us feel like we had been a nusiance in the end and all we wanted was a chilled lunch.

We did end up getting some free food parts to the bill in the end and an apology but it's just such a shame to have a great concept but the planning of who looks after what in the cafe just seems to be a bit unorganised and the servers don't seem to workout out who to serve and when.

Also not sure if the chef's had changed but what we ordered Def shoulndts have taken over an hour.

After looking on here for other reviews it is a shame to see bad reviews are not responded to by management as it's important to read into good and bad sometimes as sometimes addressing the issues people raise could be a good start to attempting to get some of those lost...

Oh dear what do I say and where to begin, firstly let me say I have been coming here for the last 13 years since the original owners, so my criticism is based on a fair bit of experience from all of the owners in this period. The issue seems to be with the current owners. Today was fairly busy but nothing more than normal and most tables had been served their food, sat for 15 mins before being asked for drinks by the most miserable staff who treated us like an inconvenience since we arrived even though we had booked to avoid disappointment two of the 3 drinks took ten mins and then we received the third another 7 mins later with no apology. This broke up the first part of the hour wait for the food though so every cloud. When we eventually got the food two plates had food sent back and it was replaced with worse. Then had the cheek to Include a service charge. Oh and why oh why have you removed black pudding from the menu! The worse thing was having to sit next to the most boring customer who one lady member of staff let him monopolise her time asking the most bullshit questions trying to make himself sound more interesting than he clearly was, he nearly put my hyper active children to sleep. All in all the BC is a far cry from what we all fell in love with and full of boring cardboard cutouts that are more interested in the kudos of it all than anything of quality and substance. Oh and who the hell fitted the seating bench on the left as you walking in. Sit on it and you'll feel like a giant at a kids table. If you know you know, people of St Albans please stop leaving this poor excuse of a cafe good reviews for mediocre-poor food and service. Needless to say they have lost regular...

Monday AM:

What a shame. Formerly the best breakfast in St Albans, The Breakfast Club is now like a poor imitation of its previous self; yet still as expensive as it has always (but never should have) been.

Gone are the friendly waitresses, replaced by a single man who, whilst polite, is not particularly friendly - or apologetic when things went wrong. Which they did a lot. We had a baby and the high chair straps were filthy. Table and chairs were otherwise okay.

The waiter forgot to ask which eggs we wanted. Not a big deal, sure. Then the food came. Burnt pancakes, burnt bacon and no chips despite them being part of the order. 'Chips are on their way' the waiter said after we complained and he replaced the pancakes. No apologies given and half our breakfast came considerably later than the first half. We also ordered toast for our baby, but when it didn't come, we didn't complain as we had such little faith in the service. We had brought food for him so he was fine.

The quality of the food has gone down a lot too. Most notably of which being the maple syrup. It's not maple syrup, it's a maple/fruit blend. Cheaper and poor tasting. What justifies the high cost of the meal when restaurants make cuts like this? The waiter did not ask how everything was, because he knew what the answer would be.

But perhaps the worst thing about this place is the overwhelming amount of fake reviews on Google. It shows that the owners have zero pride in their business and are willing to use underhand and disingenuous tactics to line their pockets.

We won't be coming back and it's...