Gonbay Restaurant - Altrincham Branch — Restaurant in Trafford

My wife and I had the misfortune to visit Gonbay in Altrincham last night. It was fairly quiet in there with a couple of tables of around 10 and 6 people, who were well into their service. Our order was taken fairly quickly and our starters arrived within a reasonable time. It took around 15 mins after we’d finished our starters for them to be cleared away, and a further 20 minutes passed with no sign of our main courses. We asked a couple of members of staff if they could chase up our main courses, with neither looking as if they knew what to do. One of them said the delay was because they had a couple of large tables to deal with, so we waited a further 10 minutes and again asked how long our food would be, and were vaguely told maybe 5 or 10 more minutes. It was at this stage that we decided that having arrived almost an hour earlier, and having been given no clear idea as to when we may receive our main courses, that we weren’t prepared to wait any longer and decided to leave. We went to the till to pay for our starters and a couple of drinks. While we were waiting to pay and expressing our disappointment with the service, one of the staff that came to the till became rude and argumentative, and basically called my wife a liar with regards to the time we’d had to wait. While my wife was putting her straight, I was given the bill by another member of staff which had service charge added! Obviously I refused to pay any service charge as it had been so appalling, and that was duly removed. The waitress was constantly answering my wife back and it appeared had never been trained in any way with regards to dealing with paying customers, and continued to be rude. Four generations of our extended family have been customers of Gonbay over many years, and whilst the standard has slipped over the last couple of years, the food and service have been acceptable, however last night was so poor –the staff seemed disinterested, behaved amateurishly, and were clueless as to what was going on - there was a complete lack of communication with the customers, and to top it all, a waitress was arguing with us and calling my wife a liar. If a restaurant is incapable of catering for more than two tables at any one time without other diners having to wait an unacceptable amount of time to be served, then it shouldn’t be in business, or otherwise maybe just take bookings for two tables at any one time? We will never be returning to Gonbay, and would advise anyone reading this to...

Every place you go to has differences. Some you notice immediately, others may take a little longer to share. Gonbay is a place where you immediately see the difference. The entire place screams luxury and great food. The smells just coming from the kitchen were fantastic. I tend to rate places I eat based on a staple. Example: If a pizza place can't make a good garlic bread, then they aren't going to do much better with the more expensive stuff. For a Chinese, the bar is set by prawn crackers. These were exquisite - and it's not often I say that about prawn crackers. Coming with the prawn crackers, a hot towel to ensure you are refreshed before eating. The starters and main courses that we ordered we on par with what I expected after tasting the prawn crackers. I highly recommend chicken cakes (think fish cakes but with chicken). Overall, we will definitely be back, and hope to...

Got to say has put me and my partner off Chinese for a while!! Came here for my 18th birthday meal wasn’t nice came back 12 years later as I’m now 30 and awful!! Weirdest chicken and sweet corn soup I’ve ever had, fair enough they gave complementary crackers but were brown! I had sizzling beef and black pepper was just bland, partner had chicken vermicelli and satay sauce, sauce was quite nice but nothing but garlic from the vermicelli I tried abit and thought the same so my partner shared mine the manager asked was the vermicelli ok we said it just tastes to garlicy he swore there wasn’t any init but clearly everyone knows what garlic tastes like! He apologised but still paid full wack for something that didn’t get eaten, won’t be coming back here again never mind 3rd time lucky as partner not been well since and we can only put it down to that as we’d eaten the same food...