"I’ve been coming here for years. Always nicely busy, a comfortable place to be and great produce used on their very extensive menu. A place I always felt I’d recommend to anyone. I’m not quite sure what’s going on. We arrived after the lunch rush, just after 2.30. Nobody to greet and seat so after a few minutes of standing about we decided to sit down at a free table. As we sat down, a waitress came out of the kitchen so I asked if it was ok to take the table we had. A cursory grunt... We were quickly informed that only ‘the bacon to the bagel’ on the menu was available as it was after 2:30. Five or six choices off a menu that must feature over thirty dishes on a SATURDAY. We made our choices, service was slow, but the food when it game was good (as it should be for a smoked salmon bagel and a sausage butty, let’s face it you’d have to try hard to mess that up) My friend then decided on dessert and coffee. We tried for quite some time in a now mostly empty restaurant to catch the eye of our waitress and when she passed and I asked politely if I could order a dessert, I was met with an impatient ‘can I just do this first??’ Another waitress overheard and offered to do it for us. There was a fair bit of noticeable disharmony between the staff and complaints made between themselves could be heard by both myself and my friend. We honestly felt like we were a huge inconvenience. After another lengthy wait I asked for the bill. It didn’t come. We watched instead as our waitress sat at the table next to us ‘cashing up’, or rather counting blue copies of orders. After a good while she approached the table and asked if we wouldn’t mind paying as she wanted to finish up. At this point I told her that I had asked her for bill ten minutes ago and still hadn’t received it. ‘Well you didn’t ask me’ came the reply. Ugh. All in all, very uncomfortable. Snappish service and for me, an extensive menu shouldn’t be so limited at 2.30pm on a Saturday. I noticed that you could order a fried egg on your bacon butty, but not after 2.30pm?? After 2.30pm it was a bacon butty without an egg. Crazy. If this had been my first visit, I would never had made a second. In fact, despite enjoying it a lot over the years, I doubt I will be back. Such a shame..."
