El Pirata (Blackheath)

This place would compete strongly for the title of The worst restaurant in London. Decor is dated, stained and looks like it was straight out of a car boot sale in 1950. laminated kebab shop menus. freezing cold inside with staff seemingly trying to conserve money by not putting the heating on. the whole place smells of damp, with mould in corners of the ceiling. food was as expected awful, i agree with the previous review, all dishes and meats tasted similar, salad looked past its best. to sum up, a bad kebab shop at restaurant prices.
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P Adams
1 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 2 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Wednesday, November 03, 2010

My family and I have just gotten back from the worst night of our lives. Firstly, we were dragged in by the promise of a full refund if we didn't like the food. Pirate decor aside, we were surprised to find a small tapas selection and what was, essentially, the menu of a Turkish restaurant. Indeed, none of the staff were Spanish (including the chef), but Turkish.

The meal was extremely salty (obviously a ploy to ensure customers buy more of the expensive drinks!), small in size, and regardless of whether the meat was lamb or chicken, had a similar after-taste.

After initially complaining about the stale bread, we informed the waiter of our thoughts regarding the meal. His reply was, and I quote; "Well, at least it's edible, I suppose."

Avoid this well disguised kebab shop at all costs!
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Disgusted!!!!
2 Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 1 | Value for money 2
Saturday, March 13, 2010

We visited this restaurant last night as a group of 8 of us on a works christmas night out. Having read reviews the week previous I was a bit dubious about going but as it had already been booked I thought we might as well go and make the most of it. We were greeted by our hosts, Nick and Mel, who were very nice, Nick had all the charm of an East End bloke!!

Our starters arrived fairly quickly and very hot. All seemed to be going well, however our main courses took ages to arrive, when they did they were hot but basic and everything seemed to be served with these little square potatoes! We had to keep calling over the hosts for extra drinks, the restaurant was not overly busy but still the staff looked agitated! Once our main meals were over, we had to wait ages for the dessert menu, then ages for our desserts (which we had to remind the staff of) One of our ladies cannot eat cream, when she asked for no cream with her cake, she was told it may be too late, but as luck would have it she managed to collar the 'chef' in time, so no risk of allergic reactions there.

Some of the ladies decided to have a little dance but were told to sit down and calm down. I did think this was a bit rude as there were hardly any people in the restuarant and we weren't harming anyone!! I could see the chef laughing at us from behind his little counter, even if the staff weren't too happy!! After we had finished our desserts, we waited half an hour for our bill which we had to ask for 3 times, we were shocked at the hugely overpriced bill!! (I won't go into detail but we have eaten for a lot less in the city of London!!) As we left the restuarant, there was no goodbyes from the staff, or thank yous, they just seemed to ignore us!!

So the overall verdict is: they need to spice up the menu a bit, after all it was supposed to be a spanish restuarant yet everything came with potatoes, include more vegetarian options (there was 1 mains option which was rubbish), improve their speed of service, take more care of their customers, and try not to overprice people!! I don't think we'll be going back there again. A bit of a waste of 4 hours I think!!
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ms acorns
3 Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 2 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 2
Sunday, December 06, 2009