P Brady (5 March 2006)

A party of nine friends booked the Cinnamon Club restaurant for a Saturday evening. Arriving slightly early for our 9pm booking, we started with drinks in the bar downstairs. Quite pleasant surroundings, but staff initially appeared quite ‘offish’ and through inability or choice have very little to say or interact with customers. Raising a polite smile seemed almost painful for one or two. Prices for drinking before hand are not good, but I suppose all pre-restaurant bars have this same disadvantage.

Making our way to our table, after ‘asking’ if it was ready (think they would leave you drinking and spending in the bar if they could). We were presented with a menu, which can only be described as ‘select’. This limited menu was not what we expected having liked the look of the food options on the web site. Vegetarians had no choice at all, one starter, one main! The ‘head waiter’ was called to ask if the choice was limited for a particular reason and if we could please see the main menu. He said that a table of nine people was too much for the chef to cope with if ordering from the A La Carte menu (?), it would “take him too long to prepare dishes”. We could not work out how it was more difficult for a kitchen to cater for two tables or one of nine, or choices from one menu or another, but apparently this was the policy! The web site mentions ‘party menus’, but these appear to be for large groups, be warned that anything over eight people on one table constitutes a large group in their eyes and your choice of food will be reduce.

Without getting a pleasantry or smile from him we managed to talk the ‘head waiter’ into allowing the vegetarians to choose a dish from the main menu. This member of staff could not raise a smile and although he might have been trying to be professional, it came across as impolite snobbery.

The starters we received were nice and the food was enjoyed by most of our party. The main course was good too, the food flavour and presentatio