All reader reviews by Sonia

The Cinnamon Club

A really disappointing experience. I'd been looking forward to sampling The Cinnamon Club delights for some time. Sadly, despite some good food and an amazing Cinnamon Bellini, I left feeling somewhat let down. The critical piece of the experience that let it down was the service. From coat check, through pre-dinner drinks at the bar, onto a three course meal in the beautiful restaurant and back to coat check the service was genuinely appalling. Table service at the bar was slow and delayed (think we were forgotten), service at the table was very slow (we waited ages for our meals to arrive) and well below par (at one point I watched as a waiter reached over one of our guests to pour wine in the glass of another forcing our first guest to lean backwards, plates were cleared mid meal, our enthusiasm for the meal and desire to engage fully with the menu by asking questions about certain dishes was met with apathy, still water was poured into a glass of sparkling water...) nothing that sounds huge but the sum of the parts meant that we felt that neither the food nor the service warranted the sizable bill at the end. At over £100 a head with main courses topping out at £37 a plate poor service is simply unacceptable. The venue is well worth a visit. Its a listed building and the owners have managed to retain the beauty and character of the original library. I'd recommend a drink at the bar (the afforementioned Cinnamon Bellini is a must) to sample the atmosphere before popping off to find somewhere else to satisfy your stomach.

Thursday, April 08, 2010
Overall rating
Food 6 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 1