St. Kilda Collective — Restaurant in West Des Moines

We visited SKC Valley junction, June 19th 2023. On arriving we were greeted and seated quickly. The server was attentive and brought water and took our initial order for coffee which was brought to our table within a few minutes. She then took our main order and very pleasantly agreed to change the regular side of marmalade to mixed berry for my wife. Great so far. We had time to assess the surroundings. It's an interesting space, nicely modern, airy, spacious - a repurposed building that looked like it may have been a auto workshop or similar in the past. But like many post industrial restaurants these days with concrete floors and exposed brick it is kinda loud (especially with a large group with young kids seated nearby). Yes, we had time to look around, a lot of time. Time enough to look at other reviews where a few writers complained of the wait time for order. We didn't time it but I'd say about 30 minutes went by before our simple order of crumpets and eggs came. Other customers that had arrived after us received their food before we got ours.

Now the food...hmmmm. We both ordered the house made Crumpets that came with "clotted cream and orange marmalade". I've had many many crumpets in England. These crumpets were nothing like any I'd ever had. A chewy lump of undercooked dough, one about half the thickness of the other. There were no honeycomb like voids as normally would get in every crumpets I've ever had. Then the "clotted cream". In a word NO. This travesty was not clotted cream, not even close. Clotted cream should be thick, almost like butter and taste of, well, cream, no sugar added. I've just been to the west country of the UK where cream teas with scones and REAL clotted cream are everywhere. This was a thin, almost watery overly sweetened terribly executed facsimile, just so disappointing. Then the marmalade. What a joke. Again, a thin syrupy liquid containing a wafer thin slice of candied orange. Absolutely nothing like real marmalade. A side of Tang might have been equivalent.

To top it off. The bill arrived. We'd noticed a sign about card service charge. The bill came with the added 4% credit card service fee without asking if we were paying with a card - we weren't, probably somewhat rare these days I admit. At same time a second server arrived at our table with a repeat order of our food as we were about to leave. Clearly a breakdown in communication somewhere. I questioned our server about the 4% charge, she said that's how the bill comes, 4% automatically added on and that if paying cash they'd come back with refund. The amount wasn't worth it and we'd had enough by that point so exited without waiting for change. Between the two of us, 4 terrible crumpets, 4 eggs (which were great BTW), poor excuse for clotted cream and marmalade and 2 fairly decent coffees. A lot less than stellar overall. Maybe other food offerings at SKC are better, we saw some being served to others that looked good. Many other reviewers give 4 or 5 stars. Sadly our experience (to be clear, mainly due to food and wait time - the servers were trying hard) was...

Short Answer: Long waits and bad service. Food and ambiance are great.

My wife and I had a reservation for 6 pm (12/27/21). We walked in the door at 5:55 pm and were seated immediately. Two water glasses were filled part way with no ice at our place settings. The water not chilled and almost room temperature. (Ok, not a deal breaker but definitely unusual)

Just looking around, St Kilda’s is a very nice looking restaurant and very “hip”. The interior design is excellent. The mood is set very well with just the correct amount of light.

(6:15 pm)… After 20 minutes of patiently waiting (all while watching a disorganized and leaderless wait staff go about their duties) we were finally asked what we would like for drinks. No real pleasantries were said by the waitress and no recommendations made.

(6:30 pm)… 15 minutes later (give or take a minute, at this point I started timing the wait staff. Including the bar tender) our drinks materialized. My wife and I had enough time to game plan. We figured we should just order all of our food because we were afraid it would take even longer to get the rest of our plates.

(6:35 pm)… from here forward all the service was more timely and what you would expect from a place that look this nice. Appetizer was served five minutes after ordering and not long after we placed our order for entrees.

(7:03 pm)… we finally got our entrees.

Overall, our waitress wasn’t very pleasant. She didn’t engage us. Good wait staff should be making recommendations, giving customers time to ask questions, and should always ask if we need anything before leaving. Once we finished our plates, we asked for the check which came a few minutes later. We are very disappointed with St. Kilda’s and we won’t be recommending it to anyone.

Attn: St. Kilda admin. Do not read my review and leave a dismissive and defensive comment. Take what I have said as constructive criticism and...

Overall, very meh. Our party of 8 dined here for brunch on Sunday and I can say that I will not be back willingly. Our server barely came by our table. They refused to do egg whites until my sister, who can only eat the white of the egg begged for them to make an exception because she's pregnant. They use fresh eggs here, so whites really aren't that hard, they gave an excuse about them slowing down the kitchen (I can't imagine they are ordered that often, and if they are then maybe consider having some of your eggs pre-separated prior to the start of service.) They do not have a kids menu, so we ended up spending $9 on a smallish smoothie for her (which she did enjoy) and $5 on toast that was very hard (she ate the middle with lots of chewing). Our party tried a number of things from the menu including the items mentioned above, crumpets with eggs and bacon, eggs Florentine, the cheddar and chive biscuit sandwich (x2), the apple and gorgonzola salad with grilled chicken, the collective toast with eggs and bacon, and the biscuits and gravy. None of it was overly impressive for the price tag. It felt like a brunch place that was trying too hard to serve fancy food without having the proper training in how to actually make it taste like it's worth the price. The wood fired chicken was good and the candied walnuts on the salad were also good but again, not worthy of the $17 price tag for the salad. I have also dined at the café in Clive and can say that it is equally meh. Don't waste your money or your time and choose some place else for breakfast, brunch or lunch, especially if you are dining...