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Diners turn tables on 'rude' restaurant staff
By Benedict Moore-Bridger, Evening Standard 17.12.07
Huge disappointment: Cipriani in Mayfair is criticised in the poll of London diners which highlights complaints over restaurant staff rushing customers
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London diners are complaining more about aggressive table-turning and being rushed through their meals.
Thousands say they are fed up with bad service and staff demanding tables back "without warning".
A total of 8,500 readers of the Square Meal 2008 guide were questioned for the survey. Some dine out more than eight times a week.
Leading restaurants including Nobu, Cipriani and Yauatcha are criticised in the poll, which saw a seven per cent increase in the number of complaints about service. One diner at Nobu Berkeley Street said the staff were "determined to turn us around and get us out as quickly as possible".
Cipriani is described as "a pompous, self-important place that seemed to be full of rather odious over-coiffured customers more interested at looking at each other rather than the food".
Yauatcha is pilloried for its "truly awful service", with one reviewer saying: "I was horrified by how spectacularly the abominable service fails to match the wonderful food." Gordon Ramsay also comes under fire for his Boxwood Café, at the Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge, where diners said "service tends to the snooty".
There are twice as many complaints about bad service as there are poor food and drink, the second most common grievance.
Price is the third biggest issue, making up a sixth of complaints - a 21 per cent increase on last year - particularly for celebrity venues. It is not all doom and gloom for Ramsay, however, with praise being heaped on some of his other restaurants.
One diner at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay said: "The food is faultless, simple, classic yet modern and using the best ingredients." There is also praise for Acorn House in King's Cross, Andrew Edmunds in Soho, Bumpkin in Westbourne Park Road and Orrery in Marylebone High Street.
Square Meal editor Ben McCormack said: "Compared with the professionalism one encounters in Paris, or the can-do cheerfulness of New York, service in London can be amateur and grudging.
"It's a particular problem at London's most fashionable and celebrity-packed dining rooms where the attitude of waiting staff can be that ordinary diners should consider themselves lucky to be eating at their establishment in the first place."
Reader views (3)
The reason we have such bad service in restaurants is because it's standard practice to include a service charge. If this wasn't the case then you would soon see service improve as you do in the States.
- Hp, London
I have rarely encountered this in restaurants and on the occasions I have I refuse to either acquiesce or tip. On the other side of the scale I have been to restaurants where they've squeezed me in but made it clear that we need to be out by a certain time which I'm more than happy to do as they have been gracious enough to explain the situation, I’ve never had less than an hour and a half which is a reasonable time to have a meal in.
- Pete Ikey, London
Why is it that the restaurants with the worst service are the ones that some people wait months for a reservation? As a rule, I would never go back to a restaurant that had poor service, or bad food - if more people followed the same rule, then these restaurants wouldn't have a chance.
- Diana, Edinburgh, UK
