Restaurant OXA — Restaurant in Wirral

The food was very good . I'm a chef and worked with 2/3 Michelin star chefs and have been in a small brigade that won a star and have worked at other 1 stars . I would be as bold to say that the food we were served was pretty much 1 star standard(I rated it higher than Rogan and Co 1 star that we had dined in before Christmas) with some lovely flavour combinations and the tasting menu as a whole had a nice, natural flow to it, with each course thoughtfully prepared to lead onto the next, with flavour profiles working together and not clashing from course to course. So, nice one to the kitchen team. However, the restaurant is a way off from achieving a star. The decor is bland and needs more thought. Their were electrical wires hanging out of a wall above us. The service was great to start with. But we weren't offered the wine flight, so I ignored it when I eventually saw it on a separate menu to the food menu. Then it turned abit bizarre at the end of the evening. There was a mix up with our bill, we had a pre paid voucher (a Xmas gift from the misses as I said I wanted to try here as I like the head chef) The waiter kind of lost the plot and became very unprofessional. I won't go into details, but it wasn't much fun for us. Then when that was over we just wanted to leave and needed our coats. No foh to be seen and we could see them hanging out in the kitchen and had to wait 10 mins until they came out. Kind of overshadowed a great meal that we thoroughly enjoyed, food wise. You will not get 3 rosettes or a star, which I presume you are pushing towards, because of the points I've mentioned. If your not pushing for these accolades then my points are irrelevant. However there is literally no excuse, having spent £350 for foh to lose the plot and start ranting and swearing at us over a poxy voucher that was a gift from my beloved, I've never experienced anything like that, anywhere. Ho hum, let down in the final 20 mins of an otherwise lovely evening. Iron these issues out and your onto a winner. Keep going guys and believe that your...

We absolutely loved the food - the chef is really talented and each course we experienced was well presented and very tasty. Unfortunately, the service and atmosphere here really let the place down and don't do justice to the brilliant food. We sat down at 19.30 and by 22.30, we had one more course to go (6 course tasting menu) and in the end, we had to leave before this final one. Another couple had to do the same thing. Our booking email suggested leaving 2.5 hours for the meal - we did so, but in the end dinner may have been 3.5/4 hours and we had an hour's journey to get home. The wait between courses was painful. There was only one chef and one waiter (they said they were short staffed) and this just didn't work. Also, we'd booked with a voucher but paid extra for peak time and a £20/person deposit. We had 2 glasses of prosecco (£9 each) but were told one was on the house because we waited almost 30 minutes for the drinks. When we asked to settle the bill, we were told everything came out even so there was nothing to pay. We were expecting to get £31 back and then leave a tip, but we didn't get that option. We didn't want to cause a scene in such a small, quiet restaurant so decided to just accept this and leave. It's a real shame that they haven't nailed the service or atmosphere in here because the food...

Last night I had the vegan 6 course menu and accompanying wine flight. It was mainly ok and two of the dishes were incredible. Unfortunately the two sweets were really, really disappointing. When I saw what the others at my table had compared to mine I was really disappointed. They had multiple beautiful components presented stunningly and I had a half filled pot of chocolate with chopped up strawberry and almonds on top. There was nothing special about it at all. I make that at home with avocado. So that let the meal down a bit. However, as I said earlier the savoury courses were phenomenal! Unfortunately the main issue was the service. It was SO slow and the whole experience took 3 hours. There was a wait of 40 minutes between the 5th and 6th course and because the wine came with the course we had no drinks either. So overall I had an ok experience but was excited to leave and we all had a sandwich when we got home. I've attached pics of three great savoury vegan dishes and the comparatively disappointing vegan dessert. EDIT: I bought a vegan chocolate pot from tesco the other day and said to my gf this actually has more flavour and better texture than that chocolate dessert I had at...