Lavender, The

Clive Cottrell (22 December 2004)

An outrageous experience as my partner - a vegetarian for 17 years - ordered a tomato and vegetable pasta but was served a seafood pasta dish. Unfortunately, she didn’t realise until a third of the dish was consumed; the restaurant was dark and the mussels and shrimps were those tiny ones, which couldn’t easily be recognised in the tomato based sauce.

As you can imagine my partner was extremely upset and started to feel ill after realising that this fundamental error had caused her to break her strict abstinence. Without going into the full detail, the manager (Mr Mathias) was rude, patronising and demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the situation. He insulted us by offering to knock the dish off the bill and provide coffees on the house as way of compensation.

The staff was aware that my partner is a regular at this restaurant but failed to understand the gravitas of what they had done, including the fact that they had ruined the dining experience for all of us. Despite insisting to pay the full amount (as their concession to deduct the £8.95 was offensive), they refused and charged my card with the total less the cost of the pasta.

Their arrogance about their history and customer base was distasteful and I urge you to boycott this restaurant, as I fear that any complaint you may wish to make will be treated with disdain.