Laguna Kitchen & Bar Cardiff — Restaurant in Wales

Not amazing, came here for my birthday on recommendation from a friend.

We turned up and waited around for 10 mins until someone came to seat us. Despite plenty of tables empty, we were seated very close to others. That's probably more on the weird configuration of tables than anything else.

We ordered tea. It was a vegan afternoon tea for two but they brought dairy milk so good that we double checked when it arrived.

Food came out afterwards - sandwiches, scones with butter and jam, a selection of cakes.

Sandwiches were good: mustard and ham, notzerella and chutney, cucumber and cream cheeze.

Scones were ok, small but that's fine, very clearly gluten free. Unfortunately GF options tend to be very different in taste and texture, and for my partner and I, we really dislike it. It was poorly advertised as GF. We ate 1 of the 2 scones each and left the other.

Ok fine so on to the cakes - both of us took a bite out of each and stopped as they were all gluten free. Strangely nobody came and checked on us in the hour we were there, and we had to go flag someone down to actually get the bill afterwards.

The waiter asked us how it was - we were honest and said not really what we expected. At £20 each it's not on the cheaper side of afternoon teas.

The explanation didn't really make sense that they couldn't have a vegan and GF option as they'd then need to then stock more variety. No apology offered even that we didn't enjoy it. Wouldn't be going back, or recommending and we actually skipped the spa there we had planned in case it was equally...

Visited for Sunday dinner. Firstly was very surprised that the restaurant appeared to shut at 7pm. We booked for 630 and there was only two staff on in the restaurant. We had to wave the restaurant manager over to order drinks which wasn’t an issue to start with... soft drinks came after about 5 mins but wine never came and we had to ask the starter server to chase it up. The parfait starter was pretty weird it only had a slither of bread so was hard to eat the remainder of parfait. The main beef dish was lovely but only two small bowls of veg for the 6 of us wasn’t really enough, the server did say he could order more but we didn’t want to have to wait. The biggest let down for us was the service following. We were never offered any further drinks. We tried to call both the manager and the waitress over a total of 6 times to order desert, the manager seemed more interested in clearing the empty tables and the waitress sorting everyone’s bills. The manager walked straight past our table and severed another that hadn’t been waiting for that long. I had to literally shout at the waitress walking past and ignoring us for her too come over. There was no apology for the wait. We then had similar waits to get someone to give us our bill. Would usually give a higher star rating as the food was pretty good but despite being (what felt like) purposely ignored by the staff we were still charged a...

We booked Laguna Bar at Park Plaza on the day of the Oasis concert after seeing a post online inviting people to join them for pre-concert celebrations - so we were expecting a lively atmosphere, maybe some music and a welcoming vibe. Unfortunately, the reality was the complete opposite. There was no music, no energy, and it was uncomfortably cold inside, so we opted to sit outside. Even then, it was an occasional breeze but a little better. We were told someone would come take our order shortly, but we were left waiting and had to get up multiple times just to ask for service. No drinks menu was brought over so we guessed what to have, even after requesting it twice after the first round nobody brought one over. The staff felt quite cold and uninviting overall.

We even asked if music could be put on to bring some atmosphere - but nothing changed. Once we finally managed to order, the food arrived promptly and the only saving grace was actually the chips, they were quite nice, which is the only real positive. The rest of the meal was dry. The other people at our party said the same. Sadly, the poor service and lack of atmosphere really ruined the experience for us. I highly doubt I will be returning, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re expecting anything lively, warm,...