Opus Restaurant

Chez (11 June 2008)

We ate there recently as my daughter raves about the place but I think she is easily impressed. The food was okay but not great for the price. The steak was requested rare and came practically cremated. The members of staff were polite enough and not on your face but like it or not, we kept being topped up with spring water and bottles kept coming without asking us. Probably the waiters need better training. One picked up my daughter's glass by the rim and I hope he had clean hands. The wine menu was good though. We travel world wide and have been fortunate to stay at some top hotels and therefore have eaten in some great restaurants so are able to make strong comparisons.

Shaun Gale (3 September 2007)

We intentionally arrived half an hour early to enjoy a drink at the bar prior.

Unfortunately, there were no empty seats at 7.30pm, but I would highly recommend the experience if you get the opportunity, nice bar area and great drinks. One of us was a vegetarian and I eat fish. We thought the menu poor on this occasion for vegetarian options (two vegetable starters, including the special and two vegetarian mains only, despite having several cheese starters such as mozzarella, (is it difficult to convert to using vegetable mozzarella?). The vegetarian mains weren't particularly innovative for a restaurant of that standard, the pea and mint risotto were bizarre and the other was gnocchi. I had opted for the fish and I still don’t understand why on the menu in the section headed from the sea, two of the fish items in that section have meat, and the menu is structured from the land/ sea etc.

I have mentioned this on my previous visits because I know of several people like myself who eat fish, but not other meats, but menu remains the same. Anyway I can only say the food was OK this time. The wine list was good. We had the Argentinean chardonnay which was very good and I would highly recommend a bottle, although it was noted that on this occasion we had no recommendations in respect of the wine or food from the staff. The service was unfortunately poor throughout the occasion. A few examples: when seated we were asked whether we wanted water and then left for over twenty minutes before anyone came for our drink order; no one asked if our food was OK; no one checked if we were fine for drinks after the initial order, even though they came and took the empty wine bottle part way through the meal and although we only had two courses, it took around two and a half hour from when we were seated because of the time we were waiting for drinks and food orders to be taken and for it to arrive.

The service on our previous visits has been wonderful and because it was so different on this visit, we did pass on our observations to the manager and it is because of this part of the evening that we are unlikely to eat at Opus again and have shared our poor experience. The manager could easily have pacified us as we made it clear that we were not complaining, but just wanting to share experience of that evening in comparison to our previous visits - unlike the couple who were sat next to us earlier in the evening who could be clearly heard vocalising their unhappiness at the service they had received! The manager's response and attitude to our discussion was unacceptable. Instead of easily pacifying us with an apology and something on the lines of 'its not like this normally' etc., (and we had pointed out to her that this was what we had found for ourselves on previous visits which was why we were surprised with that evening), she in affect blamed us for expecting an otherwise standard when we booked for a 8 p.m. sitting on Saturday night - her response was that 8 p.m. on a Saturday was a busy time and that the serving staff had a lot of people at that time to care for. But we have eaten there twice previously on a Saturday night and thought the whole experience excellent. What’s happened to the excellent American manager we've experienced on our previous visits?!

The final straw was speaking to the gentleman at the front of house who just exacerbated the situation when all he had to say in response was ‘I Hope its better next time’. I just don’t understand: the management, who were there to resolve these situations, were the ones to wound us up and let us leave! They don’t command any PR skills as the situation could have been so easily sorted. This is unacceptable for Opus and unfortunately there will not be a next time.

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